The 2 Step Marketing Secret That Never Fails

The 2-Step
Marketing
Secret that
Never Fails!
By T.J. Rohleder
(a.k.a. “The Blue Jeans Millionaire”)
Other Great Titles from T.J. Rohleder:
Ruthless Marketing Secrets (Series)

Stealth Marketing
Instant Cash Flow
The Power of Hype
3 Steps to Instant Profits
Money Machine
The Blue Jeans Millionaire
How to Turn Your Kitchen or Spare Bedroom into a Cash Machine
The Black Book of Marketing Secrets (Series)
The Ultimate Wealth-Maker
Four Magical Secrets to Building a Fabulous Fortune
The Ruthless Marketing Attack
How to Get Super Rich in the Opportunity Market
$60,000.00 in 90 Days
How to Start Your Own Million Dollar Business
Fast Track to Riches
Five Secrets That Will Triple Your Profits
Ruthless Copywriting Strategies
25 Direct Mail Success Secrets That Can Make You Rich
Ruthless Marketing
24 Simple and Easy Ways to Get Rich Quick
How to Create a Hot Selling Internet Product in One Day
50 in 50
Secrets of the Blue Jeans Millionaire
Shortcut Secrets to Creating High-Profit Products
Foolproof Secrets of Sucessful Millionaires
How to Make Millions While Sitting on Your Ass
500 Ways to Get More People to Give You More Money
Copyright ® MMXI M.O.R.E. Incorporated.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in

any manner whatsoever without the written permission of the publisher.
Printed in the United States of America. For information address:
M.O.R.E. Incorporated, 305 East Main Street, Goessel, Kansas 67053-0198.
FIRST EDITION
ISBN 1-933356-97-9
TABLE OF CONTENTS
I NTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
C HAPTER O NE :
Embrace Two-Step Marketing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
C HAPTER T WO :
Wisdom From a Master Showman . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
C HAPTER T HREE :
The Origin of Creativity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
C HAPTER F OUR :
We Must Buy Every Sale We Make! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
C HAPTER F IVE :
Quantity Leads to Quality. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
C HAPTER S IX :
Know What to Overlook . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
C HAPTER S EVEN :
Never Forget the Competition! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
C HAPTER E IGHT:
Determining True Value . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
C HAPTER N INE :
Stay Very Close to Your Customer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
C HAPTER T EN :
You Have to Be a Big Thinker to Make
Big Money . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
C HAPTER E LEVEN :
Business is an Amplified Lifestyle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
C HAPTER T WELVE :
Business Levels the Playing Field . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
3
C HAPTER T HIRTEEN :
Ideas are Slippery Fish! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
C HAPTER F OURTEEN :
The Greatest Entrepreneurs Tend to Be the
Worst Managers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
C HAPTER F IFTEEN :
The Value of Before-and-After Stories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
4
I NTRODUCTION :
By T.J. Rohleder
THANK YOU for purchasing this book. As you’ll see, you

made a GREAT DECISION that could be worth huge sums of
money to you! Because, in the first Chapter of this book, I’m
going to show you how to get rich with the SAFEST and MOST
PROFITABLE marketing strategy in the world! That’s a tall
order, I know. And I don’t blame you for being skeptical about
this. And, yet, as you’ll discover in Chapter One…
‘2-Step Marketing’ is the SAFEST WAY

that you can find, get, and keep MORE of
the very best customers and clients!
Yes, there’s NO SAFER and MORE PROFITABLE and
MORE EFFECTIVE way to build your business than 2-Step
Marketing and I’ll prove it to you! So strap on your seatbelts
and get ready for the ride! You’re going to FALL IN LOVE
with the awesome power that this simple, but totally proven
marketing method can give you!
But wait, there’s more!
You see, Chapter One is where I came up with THE TITLE

of this book and you’re going to be THRILLED to discover
more about this powerful ‘2-Step Marketing Strategy’ that can
transform your business! And yet, the other chapters in this
5
THE 2-STEP MARKETING SECRET THAT NEVER FAILS!
book are also powerful! Each of these additional chapters

contains another powerful marketing strategy that I have used to
build my own small business. I can’t wait to reveal these
amazing secrets to you! As you’ll see—these methods have
generated TENS OF MILLIONS OF DOLLARS in sales for my
company and for many other people who are using them—and
they can be worth a HUGE FORTUNE to you, too!
Remember, all the money you want,

need, and deserve is out there
WAITING FOR YOU—right now!
This money is in the wallets and bank accounts of the
VERY BEST PROSPECTIVE BUYERS who are in your
marketplace right now! All you have to do is find as many ways
as you can to attract, then get and keep MORE of these very best
customers and clients—and all the money you want is yours!
Yes, it’s this simple. It’s NOT easy, and yet it is simple. And
the more you understand about the game of marketing and all
the things you can do to ATTRACT and RETAIN the very best
prospective buyers, the more excited you’ll be! As you’ll see,
this truly can give you THE COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE
you need to succeed beyond your wildest dreams! So please go
through this book carefully and get my very best marketing
secrets that give you the TOTAL POWER to find, get, and keep
MORE of the very best customers and clients in your
marketplace.
And to reward you for purchasing this book, I have…
A great FREE business-building gift for you!

6
INTRODUCTION
Yes, I have a gift waiting for you that can

DRAMATICALLY INCREASE YOUR SALES AND
PROFITS! Here’s what it’s all about: I spent TEN FULL
YEARS writing down all of the greatest marketing and success
secrets I discovered during that time period. Each day, I took a
few notes and, at the end of a decade, I had a GIANT LIST of
6,159 powerful secrets! This list is ALMOST 1,000 PAGES of
hardcore money-making ideas and strategies!** Best of all, this
massive collection is now YOURS ABSOLUTELY FREE!
Just go to: www.6159FreeSecrets.com and get it NOW! As
you’ll see, this complete collection of 6,159 of my greatest
marketing and success secrets, far more valuable than those you
can buy from others for $495 to $997, is absolutely FREE. No
cost, no obligation.
Why am I giving away this GIANT COLLECTION of

secrets, that took ONE DECADE to discover and compile, FOR
FREE? That’s simple: I believe many of the people who receive
these 6,159 secrets in this huge 955 page PDF document will
want to obtain some of our other books and audio programs and
participate in our special COACHING PROGRAMS. However,
you are NOT obligated to buy anything—now or ever.
I know you’re serious about making more money or you

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and get this complete collection of 6,159 of my greatest
marketing and success secrets right now! You’ll get this
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me add you to my Client mailing list, and I’ll stay in CLOSE
TOUCH with you... and do all I can to help you make even more
money with my proven marketing strategies and methods.
7
So with all this said, let’s begin…
** WARNING: This complete collection of 6,159 marketing and success

secrets contains MANY CONTROVERSIAL ideas and methods. Also, it
was originally written for MY EYES ONLY and for a few VERY CLOSE
FRIENDS. Therefore, the language is X-RATED in some places [I got
VERY EXCITED when I wrote many of these ideas and used VERY
FOUL LANGUAGE to get my ideas across!] so ‘IF’ you are EASILY
OFFENDED or do NOT want to read anything OFFENSIVE, then please
do both of us a favor and DO NOT go to my website and download this
FREE gift. THANK YOU for your understanding.
8
CHAPTER ONE
2-Step Marketing is the

safest and most profitable
way to make money.
STEP ONE: Attract a highly
qualified prospect.
• Use a great offer.
• Don’t try to sell them too much at first.
• Get your hooks into them.
• Make it as easy as possible for them to
buy the first time.
• Sell a low-priced widget.
• Educate them.
• Make them feel that “They came to you” —
and not the other way around.
STEP TWO: SLAM THEM!

• Now bring out the BIG GUNS!
• You already have their attention and
interest… Now you are in the position to
show them how you can give them what
they desire.
9
Embrace Two-Step Marketing
Two-step marketing is nothing less than the safest and

most profitable way to make money. It’s simple: in Step One,
you attract a highly qualified prospect. You use a great offer to
draw them in, and you don’t try to sell them too much at first.
This is how you get your hooks into them: you make it as easy
as possible for them to buy or take some other action that
first time. Let’s say you send them a free report, or sell them a
low-cost widget of some type. When they come back for more,
this makes them feel like they’re the ones coming to you,
rather than vice-versa.
In general, that’s Step One: getting people to raise their

hands. Step Two is where you slam them, as we like to say;
it’s all above converting as many leads as possible into sales.
You’re bringing out the big guns, because now you’ve got them.
They initially responded to a small offer, so now you’re doing
everything possible to educate them on the reasons why they
need to buy whatever you ultimately want to sell them.
Now, within that guise of simplicity, things can get very

complicated. You can spend your whole life mastering the
intricacies of this two-step formula, but when you boil it down
to its basic constituents, it’s very simple. Yet this formula of
drawing people in with small offers and then cashing in later
with big ticket offers is responsible for God only knows how
11
many hundreds of billions of dollars in sales every year. Two-

step marketing is very common, and some people are doing it
without even realizing it. Any time you do something to try to
get somebody to take a simple step that will lead to bigger steps
down the road, that’s a form of two-step marketing.
The key to learning how to use this method effectively is to

start paying close attention to all the two-step advertising that
other people are using. Look at the things that marketers are
trying to do to get somebody to take that initial step—whether
it’s to pick up a telephone, send for a free report, or come into
the store. This is that first step marketers are trying to get new
customers, or even established customers, to take. Start paying
attention to this, and you’ll see that some people are very, very
good at it—while others are applying it haphazardly. The more
you become a serious student of two-step marketing, the
more you’re going to see common denominators, certain
patterns that will help you hone your ability to create your
own style of two-step marketing. Your goal should be to
systematize all of this as much as you possibly can.
Take our company, for instance. When business is

humming right along, we’ve got an offer that’s out there all the
time, generating high-quality leads from people we’ve never
done business with before—people outside our current customer
base. We’re making them a specific front-end offer, whether for
low cost or for free. The idea is to get them to raise their
hands so we can convert them, and then cultivate them as a
customer. Whatever we’re trying to sell them later on is
directly related to the front-end offer they responded to, so
it’s like a chip off of the bigger block of the whole offer, so to
12
CHAPTER ONE: Embrace Two-Step Marketing
speak. Once they ask for it, you try to sell them the bigger
block. In our current front-end campaign, we’re ultimately
trying to sell people 300 websites—but our first step is to make
them an unbelievable bargain on 50 of those websites. We
practically give those 50 websites away, so we can go back and
try to sell them the other 250 in a bigger block. So, the front-end
offer, the first step, is directly related to the back-end offer of the
second step. The more you’re able to marry the two, the
higher your conversion levels will be.
Your goal in two-step marketing is to separate the

smaller list of better-qualified prospective buyers from the
larger list of prospects, that’s all; and you’re just trying to
get them to take a small action. You’re not trying to get people
to do too much too fast; you’re just trying to get them to take
that initial step. From that point forward, you’re trying to get
them to take the second step, which is to buy something
more expensive so you can convert them into real customers.
After that, you keep making them offers, hoping they’ll
come back again and again.
We’re testing a promotion right this minute for something

we call our Direct Pay System. The first step is to get interested
prospects to send for a free report and a free start-up manual. On
top of that, we give them a fast-start audio CD and then five free
bonuses, which are also on an audio CD. So in all, they get two
audio CDs and a big package of information. It’s all theirs
absolutely free; we’re not asking for a penny. That’s the first
step: people raise their hands, we send all this to them, and then
we try to sell them a very similar back-end offer than can
amount to as much as $1,200.
13
On that second step, where we attempt to convert the

lead to the sale, we’ll send as many as 10-30 follow-up
postcards and letters. Each will try to get them to go ahead and
take advantage of the larger thing we’re trying to sell. To make
that conversion, you have to be relentless in your follow up.
You see, most people give up way too soon: they don’t spend
enough time, money, effort, or energy trying to convert those
leads. They think that just because somebody who responded to
that initial offer doesn’t buy immediately, that person isn’t
interested.
Nothing could be further from the truth! We’re living in a

day and age in which apathy is alive and well; don’t forget that.
People are busy. They’re bombarded; they’re overwhelmed;
they’re confused; they’re frustrated. You’ve got to stay after
these people and keep coming at them a little differently
each time. With our company, we don’t just use direct mail; we
also have our sales reps to call them to answer all their
questions, to cover all the objections those people might have to
buying. That’s the one thing you can’t do if you don’t have
salespeople: you’re never going to find all the hidden objections
that people have. Even with salespeople, you might not
identify all the real reasons… but you do stand a much
better chance with them.
And remember: all this is simple, when you get right down
to it. Any time you get confused by any of this, just go back to
that simplicity. It’s all about generating leads, closing the largest
possible percentage of those leads, and then continuing to do
other kinds of marketing to sell them related products and
services. Yes, it can be complicated; know that in advance. It’s
14
easy to learn, but it takes a lifetime to master, and you may never
know everything there is to know. Now, I don’t want you to
view that as a reason for depression; see it as a challenge
instead. Even though I may speak with total confidence about
the subject, I’m still learning myself—and I love the challenge.
I happen to think that two-step marketing is a

foundation principle of DRM; it’s certainly one of those
areas that’s important to your success in the field. There are
all kinds of things you could do to advertise your business:
different directions you can take, different media you can use,
and lots of different options within those categories. But, the
surefire, safest, and most profitable way to make money is to
first attract highly qualified prospects and then do as much
business with them as you can. That’s the simple strategy here,
though again, it can cover a lot of different angles, a lot of
different twists. There are many different things you can do
within that broader concept. But if your goal in your business is
always first to attract qualified prospects and then sell those
prospects not just once time but many times, and to establish a
long-running, profitable relationship with them, then you’re on
the right track.
It doesn’t always work, of course, but that doesn’t mean it’s

the wrong strategy. There may be times that your promotion
doesn’t succeed, or when other things aren’t clicking; but
generally speaking, two-step marketing is the safest, most
profitable long-term way to build your business and make
lots of money. You’ve got to start by having a deep
understanding of your marketplace and the people who comprise
it, the problems they’re facing and need solved, the kinds of
15
things they want as well as need, the challenges they’re faced

with; and then you’ve got to use a great offer to attract them to
you and get them to raise their hand, to get them to want to do
business with you in the first place.
Earlier, I mentioned our current main offer for new customer

acquisition. We’re using this two-step marketing strategy to
basically give away something that’s extremely valuable. We
could sell the item for a goodly sum; and we know that some
people might argue that we’re giving it away way too cheaply.
But you see, we want to use an irresistible offer to attract the
people that we want to become customers for life. Since our
ultimate goal is to attract the right kinds of qualified prospects for
our main offer, we’re willing and able to give away those
valuable items, knowing that we’re losing money that we could
make on that initial sale. We do have a small one-time setup fee,
but everything else is given away free, and we do that realizing
that we’re passing up on some money that we could make on the
front-end... but in so doing we’re attracting a qualified
prospect that we know is going to be interested in our main
offer, since they’re responding to a very similar free offer.
We’re holding that out there to get them to respond

right away. We want the biggest possible number of people that
we mailed that initial offer to to respond; when they do, they go
on our prospect list. When we market to that list, we know
we’ll get a much higher response rate than if we made the
offer directly to the general public. Of course, we get varying
results on our mailings, and that’s always one of the hardest
questions to answer when people ask: they want to know what
results you can expect from a mailing of a certain size, and we
16
can’t really tell them, because it fluctuates by a surprising

amount. We never make any kind of guarantee regarding
response rates, because we know if we did, someone might say,
“Well, you told me that I would get this percentage of response
rate. Just because you’re getting that, I should get it, too.” We
don’t want to run into those kinds of problems. The reality is
that our numbers are all over the place. They’re semi-consistent,
but not so much that we can rely on them to be a benchmark.
We have a certain number of new customer acquisitions

mailings we do on a weekly basis, and when our response
rates come in, we look at those numbers. That’s Step One.
Based on that, we have a group of people with which to perform
Step Two, which is to try to get as many of those people to
become customers as possible. There’s a clever, certainly unique
formula for how to maximize your profits using this two-step
marketing system, and we call it “meet, convert, upgrade and
expand.” The first part is to meet the right prospects, whether
that’s through contacting people by mail or with an ad, or
actually meeting them in real life if you do door-to-door sales or
have a brick-and-mortar store. These are the people who are
most likely to want what you have, who will give you the
maximum amount of money for the longest period of time.
The second part is converting those prospects: you want

the biggest possible number of those people that you’ve met
to become first-time buyers. You need to make it as easy as
possible to get them to do business with you that first time. As
long as they’re qualified prospects, you want to get as many of
them up and over the hurdle to raise their hand and make a first-
time commitment, to buy from you once. At this point, you
17
don’t worry about building a lifelong customer; you just want

them to respond the first time. Once you have them solidly
hooked, though, you then try to upgrade. Make them your
biggest and best offer, trying to separate the most serious
prospects from the rest. Get them while they’re hot, and sell
them as much as you can, as fast as possible.
Approach them and say, “I know you bought Item A, so I

think you might be interested in Item B, Item C, etc.” You’re in
a relationship now, so you’re letting them know that there
are other products and services, other opportunities to do
more business with you that they need to take advantage of.
You’re upgrading that relationship, taking it to the next level.
Once you’ve converted and upgraded them, try to expand and
extend the relationship with the customer for as long as
possible. This involves staying in close touch with them,
creating a close bond of friendship, an ongoing relationship
where you’re selling them as much stuff as you can along
the way, for as long as you can. In so doing, you’re creating a
lifetime of revenue from all the repeat business you do with
them. You’re creating a small group of core customers that
you stay in constant contact with, because you know you
can depend on them to buy what you’re selling on a regular
basis. These are the best-of-the-best, your preferred customers,
the clients you do business with the most. They’re the ones you
invite to all your preferred customer events; they’re the ones
you know you’re going to see repeatedly in your store, or who
will respond repeatedly to your offers if you’re online or doing
business by mail.
So, expand that business for maximum profits, not only at
18
the beginning of the relationship. As you go on, you’re seeking

long-term profits from these clients. You’re seeking a
relationship that continues to be rewarding over the lifetime of
your business-client relationship. Meet those prospects,
convert them the first time, upgrade them, and then expand
that relationship. That’s a very simple four-point formula for
doing two-step marketing. It’s the safest and most profitable
way to make money—not only now, but in the long term. It’s
also the cheapest way to make money, in the long run; and, yes,
it can be very challenging. There are many different variations
on those two steps, and you can spend years learning how to
work it in all its varying aspects. But over time, it’ll become
second nature to you.
19
CHAPTER TWO
Wisdom from a
Master Showman:
“It’s not the audience who has
the power — it’s me! It is my
talent and ability to know how to
keep giving them what they want.
I am in control — not them.”
— Johnny Carson
This is a paradox:
YES, the market comes first. But
it’s your ability to “read” the
market to discover the most
powerful and profitable ways to
serve it that counts.
The power is in your hands,
not theirs.
21
Wisdom From a
Master Showman
During an interview that Johnny Carson gave about 20

years before he died, he said, “It’s not the audience who has the
power—it’s me! It is my talent and my ability to know how to
keep giving them what they want. I’m in control—not them.”
When I read that, I realized what a great truth that is. I hope you
realize it also. Now, this statement may seem to be
paradoxical, since we usually say that it’s all about the
market... but really, it’s about our willingness and ability to
give the market what it wants.
To make all the money that you’ll ever need, all you
have to do is create the right idea for the right group of
people, and then present it to them in the right way, and
simply get enough of those people to give you enough money
at enough profit per transaction to cover your cost of doing
business with them, and presto! There it is. You don’t have to
go to business school. You don’t have to get a master’s degree,
or any of that. It’s really simple, and yet within that simple
framework there are a lot of decisions to make. Johnny Carson
hit the nail right on the head here. “It’s your talent.” He’s
saying it’s not the audience (or in our case the market) that has
the power. It’s you! It’s your knowledge of how to keep giving
them what you know that they want. So you’re in control,
not them.
23
In some ways, we’re all performers. My definition of

selling ten years ago was that “selling is serving.” I still believe
there’s some truth to that, but servants are not very well-paid
people, are they? The highest-paid people are performers.
Therefore, my current best definition for selling or
marketing is performing: your ability to give people what
you know that they want, to serve it up bigger and better
than all your competitors, to be the very best in your market.
That’s the kind of spirit and bravado and attitude that Johnny
Carson had—to be the very best in your market.
And let me repeat something you may be tired of hearing:

you really have to know who the people who make up your
marketplace are. You have to know them at an intimate level,
better than they even know themselves. What are they really
searching for? What drives them and compels them to buy the
kinds of things that you and your competitors sell? You have to
keep asking that question. Don’t just be satisfied with superficial
answers. Go below the surface. What are they really looking
for? In a perfect world, if you had godlike superpowers and you
could give them anything you wanted, without worrying about
legal, moral, or ethical issues, what would it be? Ask yourself
that. Start writing down the answers; you’ll get closer to the
truth the more you think about it, the deeper you go.
Study your market. Which competitors are delivering

what people want in the biggest and best ways? Who’s out there
making the most money? Creativity does not happen in a
vacuum. You create by starting with a whole lot of pieces to
create with. It’s like having building blocks, and part of that
collection of blocks is understanding the market, knowing
24
CHAPTER TWO: Wisdom From a Master Showman
what’s working well for others, knowing what’s worked well for
you in the past—anything that you can do to understand who
these people are. Then you’ve got to give them a
performance; you’ve got to excite them. We’re dealing with
an overcrowded, over-competitive marketplace where the
average consumer is jaded. The same things that used to turn
them on don’t turn them on anymore. It takes more and more to
get them jazzed, to get them excited, to get them enthusiastic.
Don’t let that discourage you; let that challenge you. Look at
this challenge as a good thing, because it spurs you to work hard
and be your very best..
In a nutshell, our job as marketers is to transmit the

right offers to the right people through the right media. It’s
our ability to do that that’s central, not the market. We don’t
serve the market. We’re not servants here, we’re high paid
performers. What matters is your talent and the ability to keep
giving them what they want. When Johnny Carson pointed this
out, he was saying that his ability to be a good performer was
predicated on his knowledge of what the audience wanted, and
his ability to keep giving it to them. That’s a great analogy for
what it takes to be successful in business, which is why I always
talk about the desires of the marketplace coming first.
If you’re an inventor and you create a widget of some kind,

you may spend your life savings and countless hundreds or
thousands of hours designing and modeling and inventing this
new item, whatever it does; and perhaps then, and only then, you
go out and figure out who might be interested in buying it. When
you come at the process from that angle, then you end up with a
situation where you might not even know who your marketplace
25
is. Oh, you might have an idea of the kinds of people that would
be interested in responding to or doing business with you, but it
might be fragmented; you might not have a clear idea of who
would buy the item, who your ultimate customer is going to be.
On the other hand, if you start with a focus on the
marketplace, then you can discover what those people want
the most—and then and only then do you develop products
and services that give them exactly what they want.
So it starts with asking yourself these questions: What do

these people want to buy? What problems do they have? What do
they need solutions to? What struggles do they have? What
challenges are they facing? And then you answer those questions.
Solving those problems, addressing those concerns that people
have, is your way to riches: your way to cracking the safe in your
marketplace. First, the market; and then the product or
service. In the previous section, I talked at length about the value
of the 5:00 AM Club; and you’ll recall that I talked about the
marketplace there, too. This is how you know what to do when
you’re up that early in the morning. It’s all about focusing on
the marketplace so you can figure out what they want, and
then spending all of your time trying to find ways to give
them those things.
Once some people have developed a product they think,

“Okay, what do I do now? I sit back and make the money,
right?” Well, it’s great to have one product—but then what’s
next? You have to constantly be in search of the next great
idea, or the next great product, or the next great service.
What are going to give them next? What do they want that you
can also give them that’s related to what they’ve already bought
26
CHAPTER TWO: Wisdom From a Master Showman
from you the first time? By deeply understanding and serving

your marketplace, you can develop a profitable relationship
with them. You can develop an understanding of them that lets
you keep finding ways to provide the valuable services and
products they want.
As Johnny Carson pointed out, it’s your talent and ability

to know how to keep giving them what they want that really
matters. That’s your goal as a marketer, and ultimately, it’s what
will determine your success or failure. So the formula here is
simple: first identify the marketplace, and then keep finding
ways to give them what they want. That puts the power in your
hands, because you’re not relying on this arbitrary process of
throwing a product out there and hoping that enough people
want it that you can make a profit somehow. No, you start with
the marketplace. Because you’ve done your research, and
you’ve crafted something to their demonstrated specifications,
you know that they’re going to be interested in it at some level.
Of course, that doesn’t mean that every product or

service that you offer will make a profit. But by knowing your
market, and creating the kinds of things they like, you’ll be
closer to profit then you’ve ever been using any other method.
This process puts you in a position to be more confident in
your ability to sell things that they want to buy. You’re
giving them solutions to their problems, answering their
questions or concerns, providing solutions. That’s what this
Johnny Carson quote was all about. First and foremost, it’s your
job as a marketer to give the people what they want; and to do
that, you have to know what they want. It’s as simple as that.
27
CHAPTER THREE
Creativity comes from the

labor of a driven and
highly determined person!
Rebelliousness is also a key
factor to creativity.
• Think outside the norm of your
industry.
• Question everything.
• Be an independent thinker.
• Strive to be different!

Conformity breeds people who are as
creative as a head of cabbage!
29
The Origin of Creativity
“Creativity comes from the labor of a driven and

highly determined person.” This is a secret that I learned from
a man named Gene N. Landrum, who has written about a dozen
really good business books. I want you to think deeply about
this quote.
Realize, too, that rebelliousness is a key factor in all

creativity. You’ve got to think outside the norm of your
industry. You’ve got to question things. You’ve got to be an
independent person. You’ve got to be different. A lot of
marketing is about differentiation—that is, trying to do
things to separate yourself from everyone else. The best way
to be creative is to be a rebel, and here’s why: if you think about
who a rebel is, who is their opposite number? It’s someone who
conforms... a follower. Followers don’t question very much;
they just follow. They’re not radical. They’re not rebellious.
They’re not independent. They need to be told what to do, and
they strive to be the same at all times. They want to blend in.
That’s what they’re all about.
Now, I’ll admit that sometimes rebels tend to just follow

other rebels, and they all look alike. There can be that same
quality of conformity in somebody who considers himself to be
a rebel. But a rebel is typically somebody who does question
things. They ask “why” a lot. Little kids are creative as hell,
31
because they have this quality. Chris Lakey has six of them now,
and sometimes it seems that the only thing they ever ask is
“Why? Why? Why? Why? Why?” They’re hungry for
knowledge. They want to know. And if you give them an answer,
then they say, “Why?” If you give them another answer, they
say, “Why?” again. They’re questioning things, a key
component to creativity.
The cousin questions here are, “Why not?” and “Why

not me?” You’ve got to ask those questions to break out of the
box of conformity, which is utterly necessary for success
because conformity breeds people who are about as creative as a
cabbage. To be creative, you’ve got to be audacious. You’ve
got to be different. We talk about a unique selling position
(USP) being very important in marketing. Well, it has to be,
although it can’t be too unique, because you’ve still got to work
within a certain framework here.
A good metaphor would be the world of music. We’ve all

listened to rock-’n-roll bands where every song contains the
same three or four chords. That’s because they know they have
to stick within that success framework. They’ve got to keep
giving people what they want again and again. But within your
marketing framework, you’ve still got to strive to be
different, and you’ve got to do things that are a little
controversial. For example, tomorrow (as I write this) we’re
doing a teleseminar, and during that teleseminar we’re going to
show people how they can get $110,995 worth of websites that
we’ve developed absolutely free... if they simply meet a certain
condition we have.
Think about that. Over $110,000 worth of free websites,

32
CHAPTER THREE: The Origin of Creativity
and we’re going to prove to them that those websites are worth
it. It’s bold. It’s audacious. It has to be, because the
competition is more fierce that ever. It’s an overcrowded
marketplace, and the average consumer is so resistant to sales
messages that they don’t believe anything anymore. You’ve got
to do things to shock people. You’ve got to be different if
you’re going to be noticed, and you’ve got to step outside of
that line and not worry so much about what other people
think. Followers are locked into conformity, and part of
conforming is never sticking your head out, never trying to be
different, always being a blender.
In the marketplace, there are too many blenders.

Everybody’s following the follower. Oftentimes, the people
who make it are the ones that just have enough courage or
audacity to just break out. Again, it’s a performance, as we
talked about last time. It’s also the essence of all creativity. So
think “rebelliousness”—rebelliousness in a good way, where
you question everything. You challenge different assumptions;
you’re trying to be independent as you possibly can, and you’re
not afraid to be different. Then set huge goals, and don’t try to
figure everything out at once. Remember: “Concepts first,
details last” is one of the enduring principles that I teach.
Part of the essence of creativity is mixing a lot of different

concepts together without getting bogged down in the actual
details—never getting stuck or trying to think things through too
much in the very beginning. Just think conceptually. Set huge
goals, and fight. When you think of a rebellious person, you
think of a fighter. When you think of somebody who’s the
opposite of that, you think of somebody who’s passive. You
33
can’t be passive. Business is war, and don’t let anyone tell

you any different.
You see, there are only so many people out there in your
marketplace; there’s only so much disposable income. If you’re
not out there trying to get all of it you can, there are plenty of
other people who will be. To succeed, you’ve got to fight and
beat these people. You’ve got to be better than them,
different from them. Be audacious; question things. All of that
comes from being a driven and highly determined person.
Some people are more driven than others, no question

about it. But what a lot of people don’t realize is that their drive
comes from somewhere. Some of these driven entrepreneurs are
making up for screwed-up childhoods, maybe. Could be that
they got the crap beat out of them every day on the playground
at school. Maybe some of that is true, but what’s also true,
and more important, is that most of the truly driven
entrepreneurs just have huge goals. They’ve got big dreams,
big visions. They’re trying to pull something off in a big way,
and they’re serious about making those goals happen. That’s
part of what drives them. So be creative and work toward the
huge goals you’ve set—the bigger the better. You may not
always achieve them, but you’ll probably do better than you
ever have before.
And it does take a lot of creativity, which admittedly is one

of those abstracts that you can’t really nail down or quantify.
You just see it, and you recognize it, and you strive for it. But it
does come out of a determined place. Creativity happens
mostly when you take massive action to get somewhere.
Think about the people who aren’t creative at all; they’re
34
unmotivated and not driven in any way. I think the way that you
get creative is to be highly driven and determined to succeed.
When you take massive action, your creativity comes
through in the process.
Earlier, I touched on how creative children are. Think of

how kids are with coloring books. Or you can just give a kid a
piece of paper, and ask them to draw whatever’s on their mind,
and that creativity really emerges. All the ideas in their heads
about life and the way things are come out in this creative
process, which is limitless, because they neither worry nor care
about how good their work is. They’re not trying to win awards.
But as we reach adulthood, things change for us. A lot of us
get stuck in a job doing the same task over and over again. Our
creativity wanes, because we never have the ability to be
creative. There’s no room for that, so we lose that creativity.
One of the reasons I believe rebelliousness is a key to

creativity is because rebels tend to question everything. They
tend not to take what people say at face value. When most
people are told, “This is the way things are,” they just accept it.
They assume that that must be true, and then they move on,
adjusting their lives accordingly. You could pass a law that’s
completely silly, and people will accept it. There are whole
websites filled with all the silly laws on the books, many of
which are no longer enforced. Most people are just going to go
about their day, and they’ll obey the law, and they won’t ever
question why that law exists.
Chris had a situation actually come up this past week where

he contacted his congressman, and asked them to change a law
that he thought wasn’t right. It happened to be a tax law—
35
nothing real serious, but a tax law that affected Chris. The State
Department of Revenue said that he owed them more money,
because they said that he wasn’t accounting for a certain part of
the tax code. So Chris contacted his congressman; and when
they meet at their next session, they’re going to work on crafting
legislation that will change the way the tax code is written. We’ll
see what happens. The end result is out of Chris’s hands because
he’s not a legislator, but hopefully things will change.
I think Chris has a good reason for arguing the way he’s
arguing. He didn’t accept that law when he first found about it.
He’s stuck right now having to pay the tax, because he’s got no
other recourse at this point. And yet, he’s going to try to get that
law changed. That’s basic to what I’m talking about here: the
ability to question things, the ability to ask why things are.
I’ve talked about kids asking “why” all the time, and I see that
regularly. Chris’s three-year-old is in a phase where he wants to
know why, and he wants to know your name. And so anytime he
sees you, even though he knows you, even if you’re a friend of
the family, he will ask you what your name is. And then he’ll
ask, “Why?” And he’ll ask what you’re doing. So he questions.
He’s always asking questions. That’s the inquisitive mind of a
three-year-old.
And I think that creativity, the ability to ask questions,

the ability to challenge your thinking, is an important part of
the creativity process. It’s about being driven for a certain
purpose, for a certain goal that you have in mind—a certain
challenge you’re trying to meet. Questioning everything, and
constantly trying to break things and fix them in a better
way, stems from that. You have to try to push beyond the
36
bounds of what’s acceptable or possible. Now, I’m not talking

about doing risky things, where you push the bounds of
acceptable and decent human behavior. I’m talking about how
this all relates to your business.
It’s kind of like trying to break the sound barrier: like trying
to fly faster or farther than anybody else ever has. It’s like trying
to run a mile faster than it’s ever been done, or swimming some
vast lake. It’s trying to break the bounds of what people believe
to be possible. That’s what the process of creativity is about:
just trying to go beyond what’s been done before, trying to
come up with something new and different. You don’t just
accept the status quo; you don’t continue to accept that things
have to keep being the way they that are, just because it’s the
way that they have been.
This sets the table for your creative juices to get

flowing; and from that, I think, success is born.
37
CHAPTER FOUR
WE MUST BUY EVERY

SALE WE MAKE!!!
✓ We are in the business of
buying sales at a profit!
✓ We must constantly spend
our money in proven ways
that allow us to buy these
sales at a profit.
Every new customer must be
won! We must do something
BOLD to attract them to us.
39
We Must Buy Every
Sale We Make!
I didn’t really learn this secret until I’d been in the

business for about eight years, and I got it out of a direct
marketing book by a fellow named Bob Stone. Stone was
talking about one of his clients, about buying sales at a profit.
That’s when it hit me: buying sales at a profit is the business
that all of us are in! I kind of knew that, but it hadn’t been
clearly articulated until that point.
When Eileen and I got our start back in late 1988, we were
just babies in the business. But one thing we did was take 30%
of every single dollar that came in and put it into more new
customer acquisition advertising. We did this religiously. We
had a separate advertising checkbook, and each day, we deposited
30% of our income into that account. That was the budget I got to
spend on advertising. So we were already doing it, without
understanding fully what we were doing. I’d never thought
about that way before, but I immediately realized the truth of it.
You must constantly spend your own money on all the

proven ways that allow you to buy those sales at a profit.
Every customer must be won. You’ve got to do something bold
to attract them; and oftentimes, you have to be willing to
spend a lot of money in the process. To put it bluntly, your real
success often comes from your ability to outspend your
competition. You see, most of your competitors are just like
41
those that P.T. Barnum, the great marketer who lived well over a
hundred years ago, dealt with. He used to say, “Most people
want to catch a whale by using a little, tiny minnow for bait.”
With the Internet, you see this all the time. Everybody’s
looking for ways to get traffic to their websites for next to
nothing. Well, some of them do end up with huge mailing lists,
but those lists are generally worthless, because they’re just
random names. They’re not targeted toward people who
actually buy their kinds of products. They’re all trying to
make a lot of money by spending a tiny bit of money.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way, for the most part. It does
happen every now and again, but usually it costs money to make
money. So you’ve got to be willing to spend that money.
Back in 1994, we started working with a famous marketer,

and he produced some infomercials for us. We tested them in 14
different cities. We were selling an expensive item, and we got
leads; but we just couldn’t convert them to sales, which is an age
old problem for us and for most marketers. When he looked at
everything we were doing, he simply said, “You’re giving up
on them too fast.” No matter how much I tried to reason with
him, he kept saying that. “You’re giving up on them too soon, TJ.”
What he meant by that was that we just weren’t putting

enough pressure on those people. We weren’t staying in touch
with them enough, we weren’t applying enough pressure, we
weren’t sweetening the offer enough for them, we weren’t
coming at them a million different ways with different offers,
like we do now. Today, we don’t give up on people easily. If you
send for something, say on a low-cost or a no-cost lead
generation offer, we follow up. We’re relentless. We’ve got
42
CHAPTER FOUR: We Must Buy Every Sale We Make!
long form sequential mailings, we use a lot of direct mail, and

we’ve got a sales department that also follows it up.
Admittedly, direct mail is very expensive—and so is

employing a sales department that we manage ourselves, through
a professional sales manager on our staff. But again, it’s not
about what something costs, it’s about the profit it makes
you. Oftentimes, the way to make more is to spend more. Now,
you can go bankrupt thinking this way, and some people do. But
for every marketer who goes bankrupt by spending too much
money, there are many more who are struggling financially or
going out of business because they’re trying to use the opposite
approach. They’re trying to make money without spending
money... and so they have no systematic way for attracting new
customers, doing more business with the customers that they
have, or continuing to develop new offers. They look at
everything as an expense, when they should look at their
marketing as an investment towards future profits.
One of the big advantages of direct response marketing

is that you can track everything—it’s not a big guessing game,
like so many other types of advertising are. You can easily
figure out what’s making you the most money, and then put
more of your money back into those things. That’s how you
buy these customers. You’ve got to spend some money.
For example, we’ve got a plan right now for selling a

consulting program for almost five grand. Part of our plan is to
ensure that it’s got other ways of making us money, too; so
once we get those people into this consulting program, we
have other ways to do business with them. Each $4,985 sale is
a gateway to more sales... and because of that, we’re willing to
43
spend $4,000 to make each initial sale. Just think of the logic
behind that example. That’s the kind of thing you need to do
to utilize this principle to its fullest. A lot of people will go
after that same $5,000 sale, but they might only want to try to
spend a few hundred dollars to get it. They’re not going all out
and being serious.
When I say that your success can be dependent on your

ability to outspend your competition, that’s what I mean. If
we’re going head to head with one of our competitors who also
has a $5,000 product, but we’re willing to spend up to $4,000 to
make that $5,000 sale while they’re trying to spend a few
hundred dollars, then who’s going to be more successful? Who’s
going to make more sales? Who’s going to build the bigger
customer base? We are. We’re going to win.
Now, this method isn’t always easy to implement, but it’s

simple to understand. It requires you to get your mind into the
right place, though. You have to be willing to spend money to
make money, and to think in terms of sales. I would be as
bold as to say that all marketing is about selling; instead of
calling ourselves marketers, we should probably just call
ourselves salespeople. And what does it take to sell
somebody? Among other things, it requires relentlessness.
You’ve got to be like one of those little bulldogs that just grabs
ahold of a pant leg and won’t let go. They’re relentless. That’s
the way the best salespeople are, too. They’re pushy; they’re
aggressive; they just keep coming at you from all directions until
you break down and buy.
That’s the way your marketing has to be, and one of the
ways of being relentless—the way you finance that
44
relentlessness—is to be willing to spend money. You take a

portion of your profits and put it back into more of the
things that made you those sales to begin with. You commit
yourself to the process of being willing to outspend other
people. When you have that mindset, and you’re able to do
things like I suggested in my example, you can be so aggressive
and so bold and so relentless, because now you’ve got the
money to back it all up. With money comes choices that you
don’t have when you’re trying to do things without it.
Now, I’m pretty sure that the concept of buying every

sale is foreign to most people, even within the marketing
field—where people are supposedly trying to do everything
they can to make a profit. That’s sad, because it’s an important
strategy, which is why I’ve dedicated a whole chapter to it. It
probably deserves even more space than I have to give it,
because I truly believe that people don’t think about their
businesses this way. They think, “Well, I’ve got a product that
I’m trying to sell, and here’s what I’m doing to advertise, and
orders are coming in, and I know that my company is making
this much profit in the last quarter. We did this much business,
and had this much expense, and hopefully we made a profit.”
That’s the way they think about it, and it really doesn’t get much
more specific than that.
Direct response marketers are better at this. Yes, most direct

response marketers understand that when you have a promotion,
you mail a certain number of sales letters out, and your cost was
this much, and then you’ve got this many orders, and then this
was your profit. You compare the expenses required to make
the sale against the total dollar amount that you’ve made,
45
and the difference is your profit on this particular mailing.

You do that over and over again, and you have yourself a
business. But when they’re doing it right, direct response
marketers at least have some kind of reference point for this
strategy, and this is it. We know we have to buy each and
every sale we make.
We hope that we’re buying them at a profit, though that

might not immediately be the case. In some cases, it’s even
possible to build a thriving business despite losing money when
buying that first sale. Let’s take the cell phone industry as just
one example. Let’s say I go into my local cell phone store, and I
decide that I want the latest and greatest wireless device. Today,
as I write this, in my opinion that happens to be the iPhone. So I
walk into the Apple store to pick up an iPhone, and attach it to
AT&T for wireless service.
They’re not going to charge me the $600 or $700 required

to make the iPhone; instead, they’re going to take a hit on that
initial sale. They’re going to charge me $200 to take this phone
home today. But they know they’re going to make a profit in the
end! Sure, they’ve lost several hundred dollars just to get
that phone into my hands, but they’re buying a customer.
They’re willing to lose money on that initial sale because over
the course of that two-year contract, I’m not only going to pay
back the cost of the phone (because I’m paying for monthly
service), but hopefully I’ll buy ring tones and other things from
them. Maybe while I’m a good AT&T mobile phone customer,
I’ll sign up for home phone service, get TV through them, or any
number of other Internet services, or make some other purchase
that will add to their profitability.
46
They will have bought me as a customer, and hopefully

will be making profits into the future. That’s how it works in
the cell phone industry: they’re buying every sale that they
make. DirecTV does it also. They give away their equipment, or
maybe they charge $100 for the equipment when you sign a one-
or two-year agreement. They’ve lost money making that sale to
you, and will make it up selling you things like NFL Sunday
Ticket, the baseball package if you want to watch baseball
games, or even just from you watching pay-per-view movies.
That’s buying a sale. They do that over and over. That’s how
they can spend billions buying customers, yet still earn a
profit from them.
Of course, you don’t have to lose money buying a sale.

In fact, you can break even or make money acquiring a
customer. The important thing is to be willing to spend money
to get those customers, because it’s hard to get them otherwise.
If you’re serious about the business and you’re doing
consistent new customer acquisition, it’s going to cost you
money to make money. That’s just the way it is. You have to
account for that as part of your business model... and you have
to think of it in the right way for it to work for you. Let’s say
you have a business model where it costs you $1,000 to
advertise, and you brought in $1,000 worth of sales. Some
people would be aghast at the expense, given that there was zero
profit. But think of it this way: you just got all those
customers essentially for free. Now you can really start
making money!
On the other hand, if you spent $1,000 and made $1,500,

well, you did buy customers, but you made $500 doing it. On flip
47
side, if you spend $1,000 to run the ads or do the mailing and only
got back $750 in business, well, you spent $250 to buy all those
customers. That’s how you have to look at it. And never forget
that the initial sales aren’t the end goal anyway. Your ultimate
goal is to acquire customers that you can build a profitable
relationship with. The profit comes from the subsequent sales
you make to them, because it’s easier to reach out to them and get
them to buy. They already like and trust you by then, assuming
you’ve treated them right and delivered a “Wow” experience.
This is a game, and the best marketers win. The best

marketers are usually those who are willing to do more than
other people, and part of that comes from spending more
money than other people spend and being more aggressive with
their marketing. The best marketers take chances, putting
themselves out there more; and that’s not a cost of doing
business. As I said, it’s an investment for its future profits,
because the real secret is to get people to come back again
and again.
In order to do that, of course, you’ve got to have total

integrity. If somebody gets cheated, ripped off, or abused once,
they’re not likely to come back again. So this requires a
commitment on your part to provide superior customer service,
and continue to give people what they want the most, and keep
being extremely aggressive with your marketing... which all
costs money.
So get your mind wrapped around the idea that buying

your customers is an investment towards future profits, not
a cost. That’s what any good marketing strategy is: not a
cost, but an investment.
48
CHAPTER FIVE
QUANTITY LEADS TO QUALITY.

The secret to coming up with the
greatest ideas is to come up with
lots of ideas! Go wild! Don’t hold
back! Just get into the habit of
letting it flow! Set a time every
morning for brainstorming as many
ideas as you can come up with, make
it fun and enjoyable to crank out
huge quantities of ideas — and you’ll
be amazed at the little gems that come
out of this process!
49
Quantity Leads to Quality
The secret to coming up with the greatest ideas is to come

up with a lot of ideas. It’s as simple as that: you’ve got to go
wild. Don’t hold back: throw the filters wide open. Let all the
ideas flow in. Set aside some time each day when you’re the
most productive, and start brainstorming.
I’ve talked about this before, in reference to the 5 AM

Club, which can actually occur at any time of the day for you.
We all have these periods, and for me it’s very early in the
morning, after those first few cups of coffee. Or sometimes I’ll
just sit in the shower until I come up with good ideas. We all
have a time when we’re most creative, so set aside a period
during that time to write down all your ideas. See how many
you can come up with, and get them down on paper. The
more ideas you come up with, the more good ideas you’ll
come up with. Some of those will be especially good ideas, or
will seem so at the time. Those are the ones that you have to test.
And in that vein, here’s a danger that I want to warn

you about. A lot of newcomers see these successful
entrepreneurial marketing experts, and assume that they’re
somehow different than the rest of us. They think the experts are
superhuman, because they come up with all these good ideas,
and everything they touch turns to gold. Well, no. These people
are just the ones who put this method into play full force.
51
They come up with a lot of different ideas, they make millions

of dollars with the best ones, and then other people become
intimidated. They think to themselves, “Man, I could never be
that creative. I could never be that smart.” I want to dispel that
myth right here and now! My goal here is to convince you that
you do have the ability to come up with as many multimillion
dollar ideas as you want, just like they do, because it’s true.
First of all, like I said, you have to work at it. You have to
set aside a period of time every day when you’re just letting
those ideas flow without constraint, no matter how unlikely
you think some of them are. Record them as they come to you.
I use stacks of legal pads and journals to track my ideas. When
Chris Lakey and I are developing ideas together, sometimes
he’ll pop open a computer file, and as we brainstorm, he’ll
make a list of all the ideas. It’s like accumulating little pieces
of a jigsaw puzzle. We don’t know, in most cases, how these
ideas that we come up with are going to be implemented, or if
they ever will be; and right then, we don’t care. We don’t let it
bother us.
Many times, the reason why people don’t come up with

enough good ideas is because they’re trying to figure things
out too fast. They want everything to appear in their heads full-
blown and ready to implement. That happens sometimes, but it’s
very rare. By and large, you have to let your ideas develop,
grow, and expand. Just come up with ideas. Write them down.
You can figure out later how you’re going to implement them.
Keep journals, keep notes, keep files in your computer. Refer
back to them constantly. The more you come up with, the
better. And sure, the process may be a little frustrating, and
52
CHAPTER FIVE: Quality Leads to Quality
that’s one of the reasons why people don’t do enough of it. They
get frustrated, they get confused, and then they give up. But you
can’t give up!
I’m working on two different product fulfillment projects,

and last night I was very confused. I sometimes I like to write
notes to myself at night, so that when I’m asleep, part of my
brain can be working on the problem. So last night, I started just
writing ideas down, knowing that I might figure something out
while I slept. This may sound strange to you, but a lot of
creative people do that, and it’s just one way to be creative. And
this morning, I did in fact wake up with a couple of ideas
that I didn’t have before I went to bed last night. I expressed
those ideas to Chris on the phone a few hours ago, and sure
enough, he and I began brainstorming.
Together, we came up with the ultimate solution. By this

time tomorrow, we’ll have it all put together. But so many times,
people get confused, and they pull back. They let the pain of
the frustration keep them from moving forward, or they try
to move forward too fast, trying to figure everything out at
once, and they just don’t give themselves enough of a break.
You should keep a lot of different projects on your plate and
pace yourself, but push yourself. And just let the ideas develop
as you go. I’ve used the driving at night metaphor before. Even
if you have to drive 100 miles on the blackest night, all you have
to do is be able to see ahead as little as 50 or 100 yards,
depending on the conditions. That’s enough to get where you
need to go, as long as you don’t overdrive your headlights. It’s
the same when it comes to implementing all these ideas that you
come up with when you’re being creative. You figure things out
53
as you go. You never try to do too much too fast; you just focus
on the road ahead.
And mastermind with many others you can; your

creativity doesn’t need to happen in a vacuum, and really, it
shouldn’t. No man or woman is an island. I think that working
with other people, both within your business and outside it with
joint venture partners, is a blessing. It lets you constantly bounce
ideas off them. So brainstorm with your colleagues, and
review successful sales material that others are using—both
from your allies and your competitors, whether direct or
indirect. Combine it with things you’ve done in the past, and
see if you can’t cross-fertilize some new concepts.
Now, I know that this won’t work for a lot of people, but
here’s something I do. I have a 15,000 square foot metal
building out here on our property. I can do what I want with it;
it’s the ultimate “man cave,” so to speak. So on the walls of this
huge building are all these sales letters we’ve done in the past,
along with some stuff that others have done, and some notes to
myself that I’ve written just to try to stay focused. Some
mornings, I’ll just do laps in the building, looking at the walls
and taking all these things in, subjecting myself to all these
different creative ideas.
Again, it’s like a jigsaw puzzle. You put it together a

piece at a time, working from what you already know.
Consider a puzzle: it’s very confusing to just take 10,000 pieces
and throw them down on the ground, and then pick up a few of
them and try to put together a coherent image immediately.
Different people do puzzles in different ways, but most people
like to do the edges first; or they’ll try to put a picture within
54
that puzzle. However you do it, you figure it out a little at a

time. The same is true with marketing. So please don’t be
intimidated by all these super-creative people who keep coming
up with multimillion-dollar ideas. They’re working hard at it...
and creativity is work. Whoever may have told you otherwise is
simply wrong. Yes, it can be fun, it’s like a game or a jigsaw
puzzle in that it’s also work. It takes significant time and effort.
Don’t try to figure out too much too fast. Just go at it

steadily. Pace yourself but push yourself, figuring it out as
you go. When you feel yourself getting too frustrated, just pull
back a little bit. You don’t have to let that frustration stop you;
just slow down a little. I feel that many people are driven to find
that one huge success, and this is particularly frustrating to them.
They feel that all the problems they experience, all the monetary
woes they have, all their financial problems, would be solved if
just one thing would click. They need to be that overnight
success story; they keep telling themselves, “I’m just one good
sales letter away from a million dollars.” And while that’s true,
you don’t get that overnight success by doing something just
once and hoping it works. That’s too simplistic and childish,
and demonstrates a poor understanding of how the world works.
That’s forgetting this secret here: that it’s really quantity
that leads to quality.
It’s the massive action you take that leads to your

success, not just the one thing you do. It’s the many things
you do. It’s the cumulative effect of all of the actions, and all of
the learning you do, and the life experience that you acquire. I
think that’s really the secret within the secret here. The greatest
ideas come when you have a lot of ideas, and a lot of ideas
55
comes from a lifetime of learning. That doesn’t mean that

you’re constantly studying business, and it doesn’t mean that
you have a college degree. It’s not book learning; it’s life
experience, and a dedication to what you’re doing. Consider
a musician who learns to play guitar at a young age, and he likes
playing guitar, so he does it all the time. At first it sounds
horrible, and his parents make him go in the bedroom with the
headphones on. They don’t want to hear it at all; it’s just a lot of
noise. Chris Lakey used to play the saxophone when he was a
kid, and his parents always got annoyed with the noise. A sax,
like any of those instruments that use a reed, can get really
squawky, making horrible noises when you’re learning. It’s
really pathetic. And yet, the saxophone is a beautiful instrument,
and makes beautiful sounds when played correctly.
I would imagine a guitar player also sounds pretty awful

when just getting started. Then they get a few chords under their
belt, and after they’ve got a few years of practice they sound
pretty good. They’re still not great; but if they keep at it, keep
putting in their time and practicing, they may start to be able to
play really well and write their own music. What goes into the
music they write? It’s not just the fact that they know how to
play guitar that makes them write good songs. It’s the fact that
they have life experience. By then they may be in their
twenties, so they’ve lived some life. Not as much as some of us,
but they’ve got some experiences, relationships they’ve had, that
they can write about. That makes them a better songwriter and
musician. It’s not just the fact that they’ve learned to play, it’s all
the experiences that they’ve acquired up to that point.
It’s like that in business, too. I think that an
56
entrepreneur has to learn the basics of their trade, but they

also have to accumulate life experiences. They have to
commit to being an educated member of society. All my
interests and the things I pay the most attention to come out in
my writing style and the references I use. The cumulative
effect of your lifetime of experiences makes you a better
storyteller, or musician, or performer, or copywriter—
whatever it is that you focus on. This is especially true of
older people who have a lifetime of stories and experiences to
draw upon. Those become a part of who they are, and in
business, they can be useful for many reasons.
In this book, I use a lot of quotes and stories. I’ve got a

good reason for that: there’s a lot of life experience there, even
outside of specific business strategies. It’s one thing to say,
“Here’s how you do something: A, B, C, D.” It’s another thing to
say, “I read a story about this entrepreneur who did this thing
this way. Oh, by the way, the other day I was reading a
biography about this other great entrepreneur, and one of the
things that they mentioned was this.” It’s important to be able
to pull in those experiences—not just yours, but those of
other relevant people—and that’s part of what we’re talking
about here when we talk about quantity. We’re talking about
the sum total of everything you do in life, not just business, that
becomes a part of your story—a part of who you are.
And then, when you talk about business and specifically

about the things you do to make money, not only can you
present the things that you’ve specifically learned about
your craft, you can pull in all those other experiences you’ve
encountered while working your business and from life in
57
general. Chris was telling me today about an article he read this

past weekend, about a member of one band from about 20 years
ago accusing another band of stealing one of their songs—not
the lyrics, but the tune. And the person who wrote the article
pointed out that it’s completely possible that what had happened
was not a direct effort to plagiarize, but that this other band had
just heard and internalized the tune unconsciously. The shared a
record label, so it’s possible that the second band heard a demo
tape or a concert or something where the first band was demoing
this new song—and it influenced them. So several years later,
when the second band was laying down their own music for a
new song they were writing, that memory was tapped and made
use of on a subconscious level. Apparently, this is quite
common. They didn’t intentionally plagiarize, but the memory
of that tune was in their heads; so when it came time for them to
write the tune for this new song they were working on, that
familiar tune just came out and seemed to write itself. So they
ended up with a new song that sounded similar, with similar
riffs, chords, tones, and cadences. It wasn’t deliberate; it was
just a subconscious memory the songwriter drew on.
I think a copywriter can do the same thing, if they’re

not careful. Even if you have no intention of actually
plagiarizing someone else’s work, just the fact that you keep a
swipe file so that you can study your competitors’ sales material
might generate some unintentional similarities. You spend a lot
of time researching, dedicating yourself to the craft of being a
better copywriter by studying what other people are doing in the
marketplace... then, at some point down the road, you’re writing
a new sales letter or you’re designing an ad, and you
subconsciously draw upon an idea that you saw someone else
58
use. It could be an idea for a headline. It could just be the way

you’re designing a postcard or an entire sales letter. The point
is, something you’ve internalized may subconsciously
become the basis of something new you’ve created.
Your experience as a copywriter, which comes partly from

studying copy that other people do, becomes the basis of
anything you write. So while you do have to carefully consider
whether what you’ve created may owe too much to someone
else’s creation, the concept here is that the more you have to
draw on, the more you’ll be able to pull from. And you never
really know when something’s going to become useful in the
future: when there’s going to be a story to draw from, or an
experience that may serve you five or ten years down the road.
By absorbing life and all the experiences that life has to
offer, you allow those experiences to become a part of your
story, part of who you are.
This contributes to the quantity and quality of the ideas

you have. All those things can flow together, with the end
result that they produce better ideas, because you’ve had more
ideas. I’ve talked before about photographers, and how one of
the main things that separates a good photographer from an
average one is the number of pictures they take. Although they
do sometimes have an eye for their photography or for just
getting the right set up or angle, a lot of it’s the result of taking
massive action, getting a ton of pictures, and then finding some
good ones in there.
If you only take one picture, there’s a good chance

something could go wrong. Someone might blink or look away
from the camera. But if you take a hundred pictures of that same
59
pose, hopefully one is going to be the right one. That quantity

leads to finding the quality, and that’s the strategy here. So,
massive action and massive life experience leads to the
quality that can produce the results you’re looking for. More
leads to more. You have to test a lot of ideas, and through the
process of testing you find out what works the best.
I hope you’re convinced now that you can definitely be one

of those people that comes up with multimillion-dollar ideas by
simply coming up with a lot of ideas, by being very free with
your brainstorming and testing a lot of different things. I think
you need to be very open about it, too. Some people are so
secretive; they’d rather keep it all close to their vests. That’s
nonsense. Implementation is so difficult that you can give
people your best ideas constantly, and rarely have to worry
about anybody stealing them.
60
CHAPTER SIX
The art of being wise is

the art of knowing what
to overlook.
➤ Fight for focus!
➤ Spend the majority of your time
on the few projects that can
bring you the largest amount of
sales and profits.
➤ Ignore the advice from those
around you who do not understand
the big picture!
➤ Prioritize!
61
Know What to Overlook
In full, it goes like this: “The art of being wise is the art of
knowing what to overlook.” Often, you have to fight for focus.
You have to prioritize, spending the majority of your time on
those projects that can bring in the most sales and profits,
ignoring advice from all the people around you who don’t
understand the bigger picture. Now, I’ve talked a little about
how it helps to surround yourself with people you can brainstorm
with. But if the people around you don’t have a clue about how
your business works and what’s most important to you, then you
don’t want to be looking to them for any kind of advice.
Let me share a little story with you. When my wife, Eileen,

and I first got started back in 1988, we combined a couple of
ideas that were working for other people, and presented them to
the marketplace in a new and different way. Soon we were
making about $500 a day. Then we met Russ von Hoelscher; and
because he had 20 years of experience and we did everything
he told us to, we went on to achieve enormous success,
making $10 million in our first five years in business.
One of the things that used to just drive me crazy was when
I would give Russ one of my best ideas and he would very
quickly say, “Oh, that idea won’t work.” But now that I’ve got
over 20 years of experience myself, I find myself doing it again
and again with others. See, I know what works and what
63
doesn’t now. That’s not to say that you shouldn’t test new ideas,
but you do have to be able to prioritize—and by prioritizing, I
mean that you have to know what works best and spend the
majority of your time on those things, while also testing some
newer ideas that may eventually work better still. That’s one
way to do it. Take those few things that you know work the
best and expand on them. If you don’t have enough experience
to do that, then look for commonalities, common denominators
used by your competitors over and over again. Those will tell
you what you need to be doing. Then find ways to modify
what they’re doing, ways to do it all better, and apply them
to your own product line.
Whether you’re drawing on your previous successes or

other people’s successes for inspiration, beneath the surface
you’re still working with those same proven ideas, so you don’t
need to reinvent the wheel.
This is the one secret that we’ve used repeatedly over the
years that’s been worth more money than just about any secret I
could share. We’re constantly creating new stuff, over and
over. Why do we do it? Because that’s what our clients want.
They’re addicted to anything that’s new... and it’s not just our
clients. The whole world is addicted to new stuff. People have
shorter attention spans than ever before; they’re after the shiny
new object in the distance. But the thing is, if it’s too new, then
that novelty could backfire. It may get their attention for a
little while, but they’ll quickly become skeptical.
So you really have to prioritize your ideas by knowing

what’s most important to your clientele, and overlooking the
rest. What do they want the very most? What are the general
64
CHAPTER SIX: Know What to Overlook
themes that keep working again and again in your market? Once
you’ve identified and adopted those, you have to find new ways
to make things look a little different on the surface, while
maintaining all those things that you know they want the most.
If that’s just a little too conceptual for you, then let me give
you a couple of fast examples. Consider Procter & Gamble. This
is a multibillion dollar company; you walk down the grocery
store aisles, and you see all these Proctor & Gamble products—
and they always seem to be new and improved. They’re always
doing something new. The more you look for this, the more
you’ll see it. Really, it’s the same soap powder or pills or
whatever the case may be; but there’s always something new
about it, isn’t there?
Another quick example: popular music bands. I’m most

familiar with rock music, but country does it too; I’ve listened to
enough country to know that, just like rock, it’s the same basic
song over and over again. They do a few things to make it
sound a bit different, but underneath it’s basically the same.
And look at cars. Every four or five years, maybe, they’ll
introduce a major design change; but it’s never huge. Even as we
record this, the brand new Mustangs look more or less like the
original Mustangs did back in ‘64. There are some differences,
but they still have that same basic design. That’s because that’s
what the market wants. Although we’re creating things that are
new, new, new, because our customers are addicted to new, they
still want things to be the same underneath. Our job as
marketers is to is give them more of what they want, which
is a lot easier to do if we’ve prioritized enough first, using
this secret.
65
We know what produces the most sales and profit, the

things that they want the most. And then we just keep finding
ways to make things appear to be new on the surface,
maintaining enough of what we know they want underneath, so
they’ll keep buying again and again. That’s how we ensure that
they’ll be attracted to whatever it is we offer. It has a little of
the new, a little of the old. There are some very famous
marketers whom we’ve spoken to over the years, who’ve gotten
on our customer list and seen what we’ve done. They’ve said to
us, “How in the world do you keep creating all this new stuff?”
Well, I just explained the process to you. That’s precisely how
we do it.
There’s a classic business concept that simply says, “Work

on your business, not in it.” I understand that very well, at a
deeply personal level. When my wife stepped down as the
president and CEO of M.O.R.E., Inc. in 2001, I took over. Let
me tell you, it was the worst two and a half years of my life! I’d
go over to the office and I’d spend my whole day putting out
brush fires. I’d come home exhausted; and although I’d worked
my ass off all day and was damned tired, I couldn’t name three
or four things that I’d really accomplished. I was just putting
out all these little brushfires all day long—taking care of
small crises that other people could and should have
handled. I was working in the business, not on it.
By working on it and not in it, you’re able stand back.

You’re able to focus a little: you can spend more of your time
on the fewer things that make you the most money, while
delegating the rest of it to others. It’s just a good business
principle. Remember, the most successful people in the world all
66
have those same 168 hours that you have every week. They’ve
just found ways to prioritize, so that they’re able to get the most
leverage they can in the time that they have. This is one method
of enforcing that concept. It lets you pick your battles—
something many of us learn as kids, while others don’t pick up
on it until adulthood, if ever. There are times when you just want
to let something go, because there are more important things to
worry about. The minor things pale to significance when you
focus on what really matters.
So let the little stuff go in favor of the big things. By

doing this, you prioritize by necessity, and end up spending
your energy worrying about things that actually matter.
Chris Lakey tells me that he would probably tell his three-year-
old “No” more often than he does, if he was one of those
parents who worried about every little thing a kid does.
Inevitably, the kid does a lot to annoy him, and there are times
that Chris wants to tell him “No” because it would just be an
inconvenience to say “Yes.” But Chris has learned to pick his
battles with his son. He has to decide that if it’s not going to
hurt the child, then it probably is okay to say “Yes,” even
though Chris might not want to get up and do something for
him or with him at that moment.
That strategy of picking your battles means that you let

some stuff go, and you only worry about the really important
things. That’s what we’re talking about here, with the
wisdom to overlook. What few items can bring you the biggest
return on your investment? Which projects should be overlooked
until you have time to work on them, if you ever do? And by the
way, don’t ever let people fool you into thinking that your time
67
isn’t an investment. Time is money, unless of course it’s spent

willingly. There’s nothing wrong with a vacation, or in deciding
not to do something for a while. Sometimes you’ve got to decide
to go to the beach, or that you’re going to go spend time with
family. You’re not intentionally avoiding work; you’re resting.
Otherwise, when you’re working on some facet of your
business, time is money. The time you invest in your business
is either time well spent or it’s time wasted, depending on what
you’re doing. So you’ve got to prioritize.
You prioritize by determining what really matters to

your market, and how you can most profitably provide those
things. It’s as simple (and as difficult) as that. Get advice if you
must, but again, ignore advice from people who don’t
understand the big picture. I understand the influence that
friends and family have in your life, but the truth is, most of
them are worried that you’ll fail—so they give you advice that
assumes that you can’t succeed in the first place. We see this all
the time. In many cases, our clients are not full-time business
people; though we do have some customers who are already
financially successful, looking to expand their portfolios,
most are involved in small or home-based businesses. They’re
either working part-time and hoping to eventually quit their
regular jobs, or they’re looking to supplement their retirement
income somehow.
As such, most of our clients are hearing from people all the
time, mostly getting negative advice: “Don’t do this. Don’t do
that. Avoid this. Avoid that.” Quite often they tell us, “You
know, my family members are telling me I shouldn’t get into
business. I shouldn’t waste my time trying to make money. I
68
shouldn’t try to better my life. I should just accept where I’m at,
work for somebody else, and give up the dream.” This is ironic,
because the people who are giving them this advice are, in most
cases, just as bad off as they are. They’ve never tried to better
themselves, so how can they know? They’re stuck in jobs they
hate, they can’t make money for themselves, and they’ve got no
business experience and certainly no track record of success.
And yet they’re trying to tell other people how to live their
lives, and how to run their businesses. When we talk about
ignoring people around you who don’t understand the big
picture, that’s exactly the kind of thing we’re talking about. If
you’re going to be in business for yourself, and you want to get
into a certain business, don’t ask for or listen to advice from
people who are broke, especially if they’ve never run a
business themselves. Talk to people who have been in business,
who have run successful businesses, and get them to give you
advice on what you should and shouldn’t do.
That’s one of the things you have to consider when it comes

to focusing on the most important things. People who don’t
know what they’re talking about should be overlooked,
simple as that. You’re going to have all kinds of people bending
your ear with advice, so a big step toward your success will be
knowing who to pay attention to, and who to avoid.
And besides whether or not you should listen to individual

people, part of the process is also evaluating opportunities as
they come to you. You need to be able to choose a few
important things to focus your time and energy on. As you
evaluate opportunities, especially when you’re struggling, it’s
easy to feel like you need to pursue every opportunity... but
69
that’s desperation talking. If you take a chance on everything,

you’re going to dilute your chances of succeeding. If you think
that everything is an opportunity worth pursuing, you’re
going to miss out, because you’re unfocused. Don’t take the
attitude that you have to take massive action on everything, just
because you need something to work. You still need to stick with
your game plan. You still need to evaluate opportunities, and
make good, sound decisions. Be willing and able to overlook
some things, and focus on the most important things. That
will put you in a better position to capitalize on all the
opportunities you participate in.
And it helps to have a good strategy, too, something that

keeps you running towards your goals. Right now, Chris
Lakey and I are working on such a strategy. Chris came up with
the idea of letting our clients take care of a major portion of our
marketing expenditure on a weekly basis. We give them a
tremendous opportunity at the same time, though, so they don’t
mind doing that. Once Chris convinced us that this was a doable
strategy, it became our main priority. Now, we’re focused on it.
We’re developing all kinds of new ideas that we would never
have spent as much time, work, and effort creating otherwise.
And of course, it includes a lot of our existing stuff; because
remember, you’ve got to stick with those themes that you know
people want the most. Yet a major part of our resources is
being put into the new elements of this new strategy, because
we see that this is something that can give us a tremendous
advantage in the future, and help our clients at the same
time. So it’s a win/win situation.
By maintaining a good strategy, you’re able to be like
70
those horses wearing blinders. You’ve probably seen pictures

of such horses, or maybe you’ve seen them in parades. Blinders
are little shields on the outsides of their eyes, which allow the
horses to focus on what’s ahead without distraction. They can’t
see things to the left or right at all because of the blinders. Now,
I’ve also seen pictures where they take a little carrot and dangle
it in front of the horse. The horse will keep moving because they
see that carrot there, never realizing that the carrot is on a string,
attached to its head.
That may not be the best analogy here, but the point is that
you have to stay focused on what’s ahead. You’ve got to fight
for your focus, and you’ve got to know what to focus on.
Everything else has to be overlooked.
71
CHAPTER SEVEN
here’s a lot of
T competition for your
customers’ money. Never
forget this. If you can’t
answer the question:
“Why should I give it to
you and not your
competitor?” then you don’t
deserve to be in business.
Just like in sports; the team who
wants it more than the other team
— wins!
73
Never Forget the Competition!
There’s a lot of competition for your customer’s money.

Never forget this! There are plenty of other people out there
trying to attract the same customers you’re trying to attract. If
you can’t answer the customer’s question, “Why should I
give my money to you and not your competitor?” then you
just don’t deserve to be in business. That may sound tough,
even ruthless, but you have to be ruthless to succeed in business.
So you can never forget this question. You’ve got to burn it into
your head—and then you’ve got to find logical, beneficial ways
to answer it. You start by learning to think like your customer.
Consider sports teams. All other things being equal, the

teams that consistently win are the ones that most want to win.
Let’s face it: in a nutshell, the market is overcrowded. There
are more competitors than ever before, because the barriers of
entry into business are becoming lower and lower. This means
it’s harder for anyone who gets into the business to succeed,
since the consumer has many more choices now.
One thing that this has led to is a fragmentation of the

market. Not only are there more niche markets than ever, but
there are niches within the niches, because customers can
demand to have things exactly the way they want them. And
they are more demanding: there used to be a saying that “the
customer is the king,” but now it’s more accurate to say that the
75
customer is a child dictator. They’re like a fat little kid who

demands and gets everything he wants, so he’s spoiled rotten.
That’s who the average consumer is these days. That’s who you
have to please and appease in your market.
Because consumers only have so much disposable income

and have more choices than ever before, they can afford to be
very choosy. This has led to some evolutionary pressure among
the marketers in their niches. Some of these marketers are
getting laser sharp, more so all the time; they’re becoming very,
very good at what they do. The upshot of this is that you have
to fight for your customer’s money. To make the profits you
need in order to succeed, you have to be aggressive.
You can’t run from these problems when it comes to

asking people to give you their money, because people are
extremely selfish. They may be generous in other areas of their
life, but when it comes to giving up money they’re not generous
at all. For the most part, they’re also very selfish and apathetic,
and quite aware that market crowding provides them with plenty
of options to chose some. Add in the hype, where everybody’s
trying to scream louder than the next guy, and the customers
become incredibly cynical and jaded. That’s part of what drives
their apathy: they don’t believe what anyone says anymore,
given all the hyperbole and, often, the outright lying.
So on the one hand they’re like little dictators, who want

more and more; in fact, the more you give them, the more they
want. They’re not grateful for anything—they’re just
demanding. On the other hand, they think they’ve heard it all, so
they don’t believe anything anymore; this makes them very
selfish when it comes to giving anyone their money. They’re all
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CHAPTER SEVEN: Never Forget the Competition!
wondering, “What’s in it for me? Why should I choose

you?” That means that you have to create offers that are
better than those that your competitors create. And I’m not
just talking about your direct competitors: there’s a lot of
indirect competition too. There are plenty of other products
unrelated to your market that your customers can spend their
disposable income on.
To get their attention, then, you have to create irresistible

offers that go way over the top... and you must realize that as
time passes, it takes more and more to get people’s attention.
That’s a sad reality of life; so you either have to accept it and
deal with it, or get out of the game. Because this is a trend that
isn’t going away; in fact, it’s only going to grow. Your
consumers are going to become more jaded, more skeptical,
more apathetic, more resistant to every sales message out there.
The competitors who survive this winnowing process are going
to get smarter and smarter.
Now, I’m not saying all this to be negative at all—in fact, I

don’t see it as a negative thing. You’ve got to rise to the
challenge! You’ve got to be aggressive, you’ve got to stay
hungry, you’ve got to fight! You’ve got to win those customers
over; you’ve got to fight for their business. You’ve got to give
them all kinds of compelling reasons to buy from you:
reasons that are so compelling, in fact, they have no choice
but to do business with you. You’ve got to keep coming up
with offers that are so good that people just can’t ignore them,
can’t refuse them, can’t not order.
Competition is important to keep in mind; but in

another sense, we try not to focus on it too much, because all
77
you can really control is what you do. Here at M.O.R.E., Inc.
we believe that your best defense against competition is a good
offense: to just do your job right, being as aggressive in your
marketing as possible, not worrying too much about your
competition. Even though there is a lot of competition for your
customers’ money and you have to keep that in mind, you can’t
focus on that exclusively, or you’ll lose sight of your own
objectives. If instead you focus on being the best marketer
that you can be, you’ll always be head and shoulders above
your competition, because most of them aren’t worried
about that. They’re not thinking about it from that perspective.
That doesn’t mean you should ever lose sight of that

question I asked at the beginning of this chapter, the one that’s
every-present in the prospect’s mind: “Why should I give my
money to you and not your competitor?” What’s your answer to
that question? If you can’t tell your prospect why they should
choose you over your competition, then they’re probably
going to choose your competition. It doesn’t matter whether
that competition is direct or indirect; in fact, I think it’s foolish
to forget that they can spend their money outside your
marketplace if they want to.
Ultimately, a prospect in your marketplace really has three

options. They can do business with you, they can do business
with one of your competitors, or they can do business with
neither of you. They’ll still spend their money; it will just be
spent somewhere else. The fact is, we’re competing not just
within our marketplace but with all other marketplaces. If
someone happens to have a $100 left after they pay their bills,
they’re going to have to decide what to do with that $100.
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They’re seeing your offers, they’re seeing your competitors’

offers, and they’re also seeing McDonald’s offers. You might not
think of McDonald’s as a competitor, unless you’re Burger
King; but if they eat at McDonald’s instead of spending that
money on you, McDonald’s does become your competitor—
albeit an indirect competitor. After eating at McDonald’s a few
times, they’re not going to have much of that $100 left to buy
whatever it is you’re selling.
So that’s a big factor here. You’re fighting against all the

other things that take their money, whether those are direct
competitors or not. So how do you fight their urge to spend at
other places? Again, by finding out what they want the most, so
that you can make them want to spend that money with you
instead of with anybody else. What makes you stand out from
everybody else they could do business with?
Here at M.O.R.E., Inc., we’re in the process of creating a

brand new offer that we feel will help people in our marketplace
sell just about any product or service. One of the challenges in
our marketplace is that there are a lot of people who are
involved in selling various network marketing, affiliate or
distributor opportunities. Inevitably, large groups of people
end up selling the same products and services. When this is
the case, it becomes difficult to distinguish yourself in the
marketplace. You end up making the same offer that 100 or
1,000 other distributors or affiliates are already making, so why
would someone want to buy from you?
Well, we’ve put together a package that’s worth over

$13,000, consisting of 180 of our best money-making
products and programs, that distributors can give away as a
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free gift. By doing this, we’re helping clients distinguish

themselves in the marketplace by saying, “Hey! Not only can
you buy this product or service that you can get from any other
distributor, but when you buy from us, we’re going to add on
this free gift—this fantastic bonus of 180 money-making
programs worth over $13,000! You’re going to get it free!
Nobody else has the rights to give this super bonus package
away, but you can get it from us.”
This will help people separate themselves from all the

competition selling the same products or services. That’s one
of the ways we’re helping our clients distinguish themselves. No
matter what marketplace you’re in, you’ve got to do something
to separate yourself from the crowd. So what do you offer that
they can’t get from your competitors? Maybe it’s a special
gift, like the one I’ve just mentioned. Maybe it’s an added
service, some feature or benefit that they can’t get from someone
else. Maybe you deliver to their doorstep, and nobody else in
your marketplace does. Maybe you have an extra service you
provide on top of what they would normally buy. There are all
kinds of things you can do. You just have to pick which ones
that you think are going to be the most valuable to your
marketplace.
Again, the best thing to do is ask yourself what they

really want the most, what they want really bad, and what
you, specifically, can give them that they can’t get from
anyone else. This is critical, because you have to remember that
as they’re deciding whether they want to do business with you,
they’re asking themselves, “What’s in it for me?” Everybody
in your marketplace wants to know what you’re doing for them.
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What do you bring to the table in this relationship? They’re

telling you, whether tacitly or explicitly, “You’re asking for my
money, and I’m deciding whether or not to give it to you. A big
part of whether I say “yes” will be determined by how much I
believe you’re going to give me in this relationship, and what
I’m going to get out of doing business with you.” If you can
answer the question “What’s in it for me?” adequately, and
make a compelling enough case, they’ll choose to do business
with you.
I think the main thing to take out of this is that there are so
many different ways that people choose to spend their money.
Therefore, don’t worry just about your direct competitors when
you’re thinking about the competition. Add in all those other
things people can do with their money. And keep this in mind:
almost everyone has a certain level of discretionary income,
no matter what marketplace they’re in, and in almost every
case, they’re going to spend it. Very few people will save it; the
national savings average is virtually nothing. Either people are
drowning in debt, or they’re saving very, very little. Most people
live paycheck to paycheck. Most people aren’t even saving for
retirement, or they’re doing a very poor job of it. They’ve got
their fixed bills, they’ve got all the things they’re normally
spending money on, and then they’ve got their discretionary
income that brings them down to zero until the next paycheck.
And some people are living on credit cards beyond their means.
All that money is going out into the marketplace. It’s going
to McDonald’s. It’s going to the clothing store for T-shirts, or
sneakers, or whatever the latest fashion item may be. It’s going
to the movie theater and Wal-Mart. It’s going toward the latest
81
high-definition television, or the latest gadget or gizmo. Some is

even going into your marketplace, to buy the kinds of products
and services you sell. But there’s only so much money, and
they’re spending it all every month, so you’ve got to make a
compelling case for why they should spend it on you. Give
them a reason to do business with you, and not your
competition. If you’ll do that consistently, with an aggressive
marketing strategy, you’ll find yourself getting a bigger market
share. You’ll find yourself winning out over your
competition, over and over again.
To maximize your possibility for success, you should

look for markets where most of the members are insatiable.
The hungrier they are for whatever it is that you’re selling, the
more they can’t get enough of it, the more you can profit—
because they just keep coming back for more. Focus on those
markets and build your business around them. That will give
you a real competitive advantage, much more so than if you’re
dealing with other markets where people don’t have that
insatiability factor built in.
I’ll never forget one of the most important lessons I’ve ever
learned. One of our vice presidents, Randy Hamilton, has been
with our company almost since the very beginning. He’s an
accountant/bookkeeper, and when he first started working with
us, he took a look at the products we were selling and he thought,
“Oh, man, I’ve got to get another job. There’s no way this
company is going to make it long-term.” Remember, we weren’t
even a year old at the time.
Then he forgot about it. We had plenty of work, and he just

got buried in it. A couple of months later, he told himself, “Man,
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I’ve got to get my resume out there. I’ve got to update my

resume. I’ve got to get another job. This company isn’t going to
make it.” And, well, he kept saying that to himself for years.
Every once in a while, he would remind himself this company
wasn’t going to make it long term... and it’s been 23 years now.
Eventually he forgot it. Now, Randy is a real smart guy: He’s got
an IQ off the charts. But at the very beginning, he definitely
didn’t understand the market we’re serving. You see, we sell
business opportunities to people who are insatiable in their
desire to find the right business opportunity. They just keep
buying and buying. Thank God they do. Randy just didn’t know
that... and his experience has taught me one of the most
important lessons I’ve ever learned. And here it is: if you get
involved in the right market, you don’t ever have to worry.
Half the battle is already won. So pick your market very, very
carefully. And never forget that there are many other people
trying to get your customer’s money.
Another way we work around that problem is by using

direct mail, which I’ve championed many times already in this
book. It’s our main marketing method, and we prefer it to
everything else. And yet, we realize that when we send out a
direct mail letter, it’s not just showing up in our customer’s
mailbox all by itself. It’s showing up with a bunch of other
direct mail postcards and packages from our competitors,
because our customers are also on the mailing lists of our
competitors. In the course of a week, they may get 20-30 pieces
of mail along with the little direct mail letter that we spent so
much time working on. Our letter is competing with all the
other stuff in their mailbox— and the more we’re aware of
that, the stronger our offers become.
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Now, the problems I’ve discussed here aren’t an attempt

to discourage you in your marketing efforts; quite the
opposite. Let yourself be empowered by all this. Look: it’s a
game, it’s a hunt. The fiercest competitors are always the ones
who win, so you’ve got to be aggressive. You’ve got to stay
hungry. You’ve got to create irresistible offers, and you have
to keep finding ways to do things to differentiate yourself, so
you stand out in the marketplace. You’re different, so you
have to think differently, and you have to think aggressively.
Don’t become overwhelmed by this. Look at it as the ultimate
challenge, one that tests your ability to rise above it all and
overcome all those competitors—direct and indirect—trying to
take that income that could and should be yours.
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CHAPTER EIGHT
You can never know the

true value of something until
and unless you compare it
with something else.
B
This is a powerful marketing
strategy that you must incorporate into
all of your sales material. Find as
many ways as possible to associate
yourself, your company, and your
products and services with other
items that have the greatest value
in the minds and hearts of the
people in your market.
85
Determining True Value
You can never know the true value of something until and
unless you compare it with something else. This is a powerful
marketing strategy that you’ve got to incorporate into all of your
sales material. You’ve got to find as many ways as possible to
associate yourself, your company, your products and your
services with other items that have great value in the minds
and hearts of your prospects. Unlike so many of the 500 Ways,
which are based on common sense more than anything else, this
is a genuine secret: it’s not something, by and large, that a study
of the marketplace is going to easily reveal.
In this section, I’m going to outline a number of ways to

help you understand how to incorporate this secret into your
money-making process.
First of all, never compare apples to apples. You always

need to compare apples to oranges; and when I say apples to
oranges, I’m talking about you helping people understand
the value of your product or service by comparing it with
something of a much higher value. When we first started
selling $5,000 seminars, all our sales materials compared the
cost of a traditional business to what we were offering: a
complete, turnkey business opportunity for just $5000. When
we showed them what a traditional business would cost to
start up, it made the price of our opportunity seem small by
87
comparison. So we were comparing apples to oranges, and

that’s just one example of how to do this.
When you create the sales material, you have to do the

thinking for the people you intend to read it—and not because
they’re stupid. It has nothing to do with mental capacity at all. It
has to do with the way people read sales material. They look
everything over in a skeptical, apathetic, even cynical kind of
way. And unless you’re doing the comparisons for them,
they’re never going to really think things through; they don’t
have the time or energy. So again, you’ve got to think things
through for them. For an example, on our advertising and
management service, one position usually costs less than a dollar
a day. And so what we have is a little comparison table that
shows what you can buy for a dollar. We give you 30-35 different
comparisons of what you normally pay a dollar for, to try to get
you to think the way we think, which is this: that a dollar is
nothing. You can spend a dollar a day without even thinking
about it. People are constantly spending a buck here, a buck
there, and not even giving it a second thought. So we give you
many different examples of things that you commonly buy
for a dollar that you don’t even think about. We’re making
those comparisons for people, helping them think it though.
We also do a thorough job of educating customers. For

example, we have a product that shows you how to turn 33 cents
a day into thousands of dollars a month. In the literature for
that product, we offer 27 different examples of problems
faced by various businesses, and then we show you how our
opportunity solves each one of those problems. We’re helping
people understand the value of what we have by comparing it
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CHAPTER EIGHT: Determining True Value
with something else. That’s the only way you know something
is valuable: by having something to compare it with. And you
have to make those comparisons to your prospective buyers in a
clear, forceful way, to educate them on why what you have to
offer is worth every penny that you say it is. You can’t expect
them to figure it out on their own.
Another example: we have something called our Club-20

International opportunity, which is a whole different way to
make money with multi-level marketing. Now, anybody can
make a statement like that. But in the marketing material,
what we’ve done is carefully describe the four problems that
are inherent with all multi-level marketing opportunities,
before showing how our compensation plan and
opportunities eliminated or were a solution to those
problems. We did a direct, simple comparison for people. We
didn’t just make some statement without backing it up with
examples. Comparisons are important, because they help
people think through things, by showing them all the different
problems and how we solve those problems.
Here’s another example. We have a certain kind of website

we’re developing right now called the ATM website, where
ATM stands for Automatic Transporter Method. But we also tell
people that one reason we chose that name, ATM, was that
the system works like an ATM cash machine. These websites
are designed to pay people just as if they had their own cash
machines. We show a picture of an ATM machine, and we make
those comparisons so that people make that connection. People
already know what an ATM machine is, so we’re comparing our
web sites with one. We’re showing them how the ATM website
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can profit them.
You’ve got to build your case for your product; that’s a

foundation principle of marketing. You can’t just say that
you’ve got the best product or service, because everybody does
that... and nobody believes it anymore. So it’s up to you to
prove that it’s true, by giving them specific, dramatic
examples. That’s one of the reasons you compare things, one of
the reasons you give examples. You want to prove the value of
what you’ve got to people. That’s why we started doing that
from the very beginning with our websites. We showed people
the prices that they would normally pay for different hosting
services, using real companies, so people could see that we
weren’t just making this stuff up. I’ve said this before in these
pages, and doubtless will again: when people read your sales
material, they don’t believe a damn word that you say.
Therefore, you’ve got to prove to them that what you’re
saying is the honest truth.
So we put together a program called the Yellow Page

Challenge. Basically, we called all these website developers and
asked them what their prices were, pretending we were
prospective buyers—and we recorded their responses, and just
let them tell it. We showed people the truth in a dramatic way.
We didn’t just say that our websites were worth this much
money; we actually proved it, using real-world comparisons.
Making these kinds of sharp, contrasting comparisons

takes people from where they’re at to where you want them
to be. Most of the time as a marketer, you can be assured that
the people reading your sales material are pretty much apathetic.
They’ve seen it all before, and they don’t really trust what
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CHAPTER EIGHT: Determining True Value
they’ve seen. So this is your opportunity as a marketer to be

very creative, to take them from where they’re at to where you
want them to be—and where you want them to be is a paying
customer. Properly handled, these comparisons and contrasts
raise the value of your product in the mind of your prospect,
so what you’re selling them becomes very critical.
You especially have to build the case that the money

they’re going to spend with you is paltry—that it’s hardly
anything compared to the benefits and the value they’re
going to receive from your product. You see this in a lot of
savvy marketing out there. It’s unfortunate that this is a lesson
that many, many marketers don’t understand—this strategy of
entering their prospects’ minds and thinking along to the point
where you want them to get to, where you want them to buy.
This strategy helps you understand exactly what you to

have to do to get them there. I have a friend and colleague, Chris
Hollinger, who used to be a teacher. He says that back then, he
always started from the point of the student knowledge base:
that is, he looked first at where the students were, then at where
he wanted to take them. What happened in between is the
science and the art of teaching. Well, making a sell is no
different. You have a prospect who comes to you with their own
prejudices, their own pre-conceived notions, and it’s your job as
the marketer to get them to the final result, which is them saying
“yes”: “Yes, I want to join your opportunity; Yes, I want your
product; Yes, I want your service.”
It’s these comparisons that relay that. The more selling and
copywriting you do, the more thinking you do about your
particular products, services or opportunities, the better at this
91
you’ll become. You’ll get so good at making those comparisons

that in the end, they’re going to say, “Wow, you mean I’m going
to get all this for only this much money? All these benefits?
Wow!” These comparisons help you get from point A to point
B in the selling process. You’re helping them to see what
you’re seeing, building that value in their mind to a tremendous
level, making what you’re offering look incredibly worthwhile.
Remember, people don’t want cheap things; they want
valuable things for cheap prices. Therefore, it’s up to us to
establish that value, and prove it beyond any doubt they
might have. It seems simple, and really, it is simple—and yet
most people don’t do enough of it. If you’re having trouble
figuring it out yourself, I’d say study the good marketers and see
how they’re doing it. Clearly, they’re doing a great job of
proving to people that what they say is true.
Also, here’s an idea: think like a lawyer. Consider all the

possible objections someone could bring up, and address
them first. Either show how they’re erroneous, or how your
product overcomes them. Just as a lawyer would, build a
strong case based on the preponderance of evidence—not
just a little proof. Go overboard if you must. That’s the way
you have to be, I think, when you sell things for a living.
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CHAPTER NINE
AAA
Stay very close
to your customer.
Know your customers better than
they know themselves. How? By
thinking about them all the time and
realizing that the real reasons they
buy are mostly unconscious.
AAA
93
Stay Very Close to
Your Customer
Here’s a topic we’ve touched on in a variety of ways

elsewhere in this book. Basically, you have to stay very close to
your customer, in the sense that you need to know your
customers better than they know themselves. How? By thinking
about them all the time, and by realizing that the real
reasons they buy are mostly unconscious. The reasons why
most of us buy anything are mostly unconscious. Most of our
actions are unconscious, in fact. That’s just Psychology 101, and
good marketing is simply math and psychology. You have to
have an intimate understanding of who your customers are, what
they want, what they don’t want, what they like, and what they
don’t like. You’ve got to think like they think. If I had to come
up with one thing that’s made us more money than any other
thing, this would be it.
When we first got started, we knew very well who the

market was, because we were part of the market. We’d been
buying up all these money-making programs for years. We were
on all of the mailing lists, and it became very easy for us to
know what the opportunity market wanted, because we were the
opportunity market. It takes one to know one, as a child will
often say. We knew who the customers were because the
customers were us. That’s why one of the things we suggest to a
lot of our clients is simply this: bloom where you’re planted.
Take a page out of our playbook. The opportunity market is
95
made up of millions of people who are just like you. Look in

the mirror and point. You are the opportunity market. If
you’re looking for a market to get into that you already
intimately understand, believe it or not (and I’d like for you to
really think about this) you are this market.
People buy for emotional reasons. They buy for

unconscious reasons. And oftentimes, what people really
want are things that are highly irrational. It’s up to you to try
to figure out why they buy what they buy. And I know it sounds
like simple common sense, but you’ve got to dig deeper and go
beyond what’s visible on the surface. I mean, for instance, you
might say, “People in the opportunity market want to make more
money.” Of course they do, but it goes way beyond that. There
are many deeply emotional reasons why people buy all these
money-making opportunities and biz opps.
To figure those reasons out, you’ve got to try to stay

close to your customer. One of the reasons why we love doing
our live events, where we meet with our clients, is simply that
they help us understand our clients better. You have to think
about your customers all the time. Constantly. What do they
want? What are they really looking for, and how can you
provide it to them, and how can you serve it up better than
anyone else?
Here’s an idea I got from one of the greatest copywriters in

this country right now—a man who charges tens of thousands of
dollars for writing sales letters. As a creative exercise, ask
yourself this question: If I had God-like superpowers, and I
could give my customers anything that they wanted, what
would it be? And then just start brainstorming, coming up with
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CHAPTER NINE: Stay Very Close to Your Customer
all kinds of ideas. Some of your ideas may seem a little foolish,
but just keep coming up with these ideas, thinking like your
customers the whole time. Quantity ultimately leads to quality,
as long as you’re inside their minds and hearts. And don’t
choose a market just because you think it’s going to make you a
lot of money. Choose a market that you know something
about, one that you have an intimate awareness of. If you
don’t, your ignorance can cost you dearly.
One thing that separates my work from me having a job, as

opposed to something that I choose to do, something that I enjoy
doing, is the fact that one of the aspects of my work is to
think critically about my marketplace, about my business,
and about my customers. And ironically enough, it’s one of the
most creative things I do, simply because I’m always evaluating
how my offer—how my infrastructure, how my marketing, how
a particular advertising campaign, how my entire message—will
play between the ears of my customers. As a marketer, I’m
always dealing with psychology: the wants and needs and
desires of my customers. That’s basic to the profession.
And I don’t need to tell anybody reading this that people

are absolutely crazy in their own ways... and yet we sell to these
people. They’re our customers: so being able to think critically
and even creatively about your marketplace, about who your
customers are and what’s going to get their attention, about
what’s going to get them to act and what they’re going to
like—that’s vitally important. And often, when you’re
immersed in a particular industry, as we are, you’re right there in
the middle of it. You look in the mirror to find your marketplace,
because they are you.
97
Even if you think that doesn’t apply to you, consider this:

you’re probably on some kind of mailing list right now. I
suspect you’re receiving things in the mail constantly: not just
from me, but from other marketers as well. You are the home-
based business industry, in and of itself. So take the time to
think critically, not just about the nuts and bolts of what you’re
doing, but about who your customers are. Consider, for
example, network marketing, which is where many people in
this field get started.
Now, I realize that not everybody has the same knack for
selling that I do or Chris Lakey does. There are some people
who are just better at it. Yet most network marketing companies
out there force you to sell, which may not be something that’s
normally in your nature. Furthermore, one of the biggest fears
most people have is public speaking. You have to train yourself
to do that, and some people are just more gifted at it than others.
Well, knowing all that tells me that most people are going to
need systems to plug into, because they’re not going to be able
to go out there and sell with standard network marketing tactics
right away. They’re not going to be that dynamic guy who gets
up in front of a group and talks. So if you’re going at it from a
networking perspective, what can you do for your customers
so they don’t have to go out there and be super salesmen, but
still make decent money?
Clearly, you need to develop systems with your

customers in mind, so you really have to reflect on the
constraints of your marketplace and of the people involved
in it. In the network marketing example, people want to make
money—but they don’t want to have to talk to other people.
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Okay, so what can you do to help them make money when 90%
of the companies out there are saying you’re going to have to
talk to people, you’re going to have to drive people to a
conference call, you’re going to have to invite them to a
conference or ambush them in your homes? If you can build a
system that limits or eliminates that need in the right way, then
that becomes a very big attractor. Find a way to tell your
prospects, “Look, you can make money with this business
and not have to talk to anybody.” That’s a big issue right there
for the vast majority of home-based business people. That’s a
winning message. It’s been done over and over. We’ve done it
here at M.O.R.E., Inc.
When it comes to thinking like a customer, you just can’t

work in a vacuum. Study them closely so you can gauge their
needs, and especially their wants. If you study enough
successful letters, websites, or sales material of any kind in
any market, you’ll see the same common denominators
continue to show up. These are clues to what people want, so
just add those messages to yours.
There are other ways to do this, too. One of the things I’m
so thankful for here at M.O.R.E., Inc. is our sales department.
They’re on the phone constantly with our clients, every
single day. And thank goodness we get their feedback,
because sometimes the customers are thinking totally
differently than we think they are! As an example, we had a
program this year that I thought customers would get really
excited about... but it turned out that they weren’t interested at
all. Our sales department helped us determine that more quickly
than we might have otherwise. And here’s what it was: we were
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offering to give away up to 10,000 postcards absolutely free to

all of our clients. We got all pumped up about it, so we thought
the customers were going to just jump up and down at the
prospect. But here’s the thing: it turns out that a lot of our clients
look at those free postcards as 10,000 times $0.28 for postage.
They started realizing, “Oh, my God, I’m going to have to mail
10,000 of these post cards! That’s $2,800!”
All they saw was this tremendous cost, so what we thought

was going to be a great benefit turned out to be a very negative
thing. Again, you have to stay close to your customers, so you
know how they’re thinking. Don’t make any assumptions.
Sometimes the way you assume they’re thinking is not how
they’re thinking at all.
Here’s an example from my colleague Chris Hollinger. He

sells a T-shirt showing a picture of our President running away
from a calculator lady, because he’s ringing up such massive
debt. And it says, “There’s something rotten in Washington. I
think it’s BO.” Now, when Chris was thinking critically about
making this offer, about mixing business with politics as this
does, he thought that more than likely he was going to alienate
many potential African-American customers. It seems logical,
right? But the truth is, the response been absolutely the
opposite. In the five months since he’s launched this offer, he’s
had more people of color signing up with him than in his
previous seven years in business. So Chris jumped to that
conclusion erroneously.
And that’s why this point is so important: you not only

have to think critically about your marketplace, you need
feedback to be sure that you’re on the mark. That’s what
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Chris has done with his T-shirt idea, which is criticizing the
President not because of his race, but because of his policies.
That’s a critical distinction. Now, he’s gotten hate mail, which is
another form of feedback. But the numbers don’t lie. And that
feedback you get from your sales team really helps you keep
your finger on the heartbeat of your marketplace. Sometimes
you get a surprise like this, when something you thought was
going to happen is totally opposite of what does.
Sometimes it’s for the better. Sometimes it’s for the

worst. Either way, that feedback is absolutely necessary.
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CHAPTER TEN
$$$$$
You must be a BIG THINKER
to make BIG MONEY!
✓ First comes the GOAL (the mission, the
focus, the target).
✓ Then come the specific strategies you

will use to achieve this outcome.
✓ The why to do something is far more

important than the how to do something.
✓ Work backwards. Establish the goals and the

game plan first — then develop the steps to
getting there.
$$$$$
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You Have to Be a Big Thinker
to Make Big Money
Here’s something that sounds like common sense—but as

Mark Twain used to say, “Common sense is a very uncommon
thing.” If you want to make big money, think big! If you want
to catch a whale, don’t use a minnow for bait! It’s all
straightforward: first comes the goal, the mission, the focus,
the target. Then come the specific strategies you’re going to use
to achieve that outcome. Not only is why you do something far
more important then how you do it, you have to start at the
end and work backwards.
Here’s what I mean: you establish the goal and the

game plan first, then you develop the steps to get there. Too
many people are far too unreasonable when it comes to making
money: they trip themselves up by trying to focus on the details
before the concept. Remember: concepts first, details last.
The goal always comes first. If you don’t already have a written
goal in place covering how much money you want to make,
then you’re shooting yourself in the foot. If you don’t have one,
your activities aren’t going to be nearly as focused; you’re not
going to be as productive; you’re never going to make the kind
of money that you could. So create that written goal, and set
it high.
When we first came up with the idea of making a million

dollars a month, it was about twice the amount we were
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normally making. We set the goal, then we developed the

strategies, then we looked at the necessary numbers. Similarly,
we recently developed a $100 million business plan for a new
company that we’re starting. Well, that doesn’t mean we’re
necessarily going to achieve $100 million worth of revenue a
year; however, that’s our business plan. We’re thinking big
here—because it requires no more effort to think big than it
does to think small.
I used to listen to a motivational speaker who’s no longer

with us. He used to say, “You have to see it bigger, and think it
simpler.” Most people just don’t think big enough: they’re
thinking excessively small, simply not demanding enough
from life. Therefore, I would encourage you to set big goals,
and not worry too much about all the details. Most people get
too bogged down in the details, when really, they should be
worried about the broader concepts.
Now, admittedly, frustration and confusion are going to be

traveling campaigns on the road to success. There’s no question
of that. There will be plenty of times when you get confused
and frustrated. That’s one of the reasons why your goals have
to begin with those big concepts. You have those things that
you’re always running towards; you have those ideals, if you
will, so anytime you do get frustrated and confused, you can
always go back to those goals—you can always go back to
those concepts.
The founder of Domino’s Pizza, Tommy Monaghan, went

through a tremendous series of crises where he almost went
bankrupt about six different times in his career. And the last time
was the worst. He went through a period of two or three years
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CHAPTER TEN: You Have to Be a Big Thinker to Make Big Money
when there was almost no light at the end of the tunnel. It looked
like he was going to lose everything he’d worked so hard for. So
one of the things he kept doing as a way of coping with all that,
and as a way of keeping him on focus and on target, was to
spend hours going back to the basics of his business.
He had 6,500 different franchises, and he would do things

like running different cost analyses, just running the numbers on
paper, proving to himself repeatedly that his ideas could work,
and staying focused on that main goal. It’s like when you’re a
race car driver or a jet fighter pilot. There are no rear-view
mirrors: your eyes and attention must be focused on what’s
ahead. Same for the businessman. You have to stay focused on
the road ahead. You can’t avoid confusion and frustration, but
you have to find a way to get beyond it; and part of that is to
keep going back to your goals and to keep thinking big.
It does go back to laying out those guiding principles that

are going to lead you through those rough times when you’re
bogged down in details, when you’re overcoming obstacles, and
you’re caught up in the chaos of the moment. This helps you
keep your eyes on the prize—and it can do the same for your
entire organization. As Daniel Burnham said a century ago,
there’s no magic in little dreams. You’re not going to motivate
anybody—you’re not going to push anybody to excel or to join
you in any endeavor whatsoever—if all you want to accomplish
is the little things. You’ve got to have those big, exciting
dreams that really get you going, which infuse you with
energy that translates to your business, translates to your
customers, translates to everything about you—not just in
your business, but everywhere in your life.
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Thinking big, having those big dreams, those big

motivations, really does more than just keep an individual
focused. It can stimulate an entire organization, like the Tea
Party political movement here in America. Their enthusiasm has
been generated by the principles of the Constitution and
responsible government. It resonates with people—but only
because people got passionate about it, had a big dream. Look,
we’ve got to do something here before our government crosses
too many lines. At what point in our evolution of a civil society
do we decide that’s the case? This is something that people are
afraid of, so there’s a movement out there of people saying,
“Look, this is enough. Let’s pull our heads out of the sand and
let’s right the ship here.” Something like that has to be bold and
big to really get things done.
And when do you cross that line? Because there is a line.

Anybody can think big. We can all sit around and talk about how
many billions of dollars we want to make, but that doesn’t mean
any of us are going to make billions of dollars. When does it
become delusional? That’s the question I asked one of my
mentors once: “When do you cross over the line, so that you’re
thinking so big that it’s just foolish?” And he said, “When you
stop believing it, first of all, and when you’re not willing to
do whatever it takes. Because just having a huge goal isn’t
enough; it has to be followed up with the willingness to do
whatever it takes to achieve it.”
One of the things that Chris Hollinger says is close to his

heart at the moment is a software system that his company is
creating. When his developers told him that their alphanumeric
sequence and their servers would handle up to 60 million people,
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CHAPTER TEN: You Have to Be a Big Thinker to Make Big Money
he was like, “Well, that’s thinking big!” But it has to have that
kind of number-crunching capability to calculate all the
commissions. So when you’re thinking big, what’s a good
number to shoot for? Would a million be enough? Chris has set
some incremental goals for his first year, and those goals are
going to drive his focus on how much advertising he’s going to
need. How much work is required, for him and his members, to
recruit that many people? Chris has some big goals, but they’re
concrete enough that he’s going to be able to shoot for those
goals and keep his eyes on the prize. A year from now he wants
to be able to say, “Look, we’re doing what we set out to do,” and
at the same time know that it’s now going to be easy.
Having those goals is important. Set the bar high. This

inspires you to achieve more; and whether you achieve
everything you tried for or not, it’s still worthwhile to try.
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CHAPTER ELEVEN
≥≥≥≥≥
Business is an
amplified lifestyle.
It’s life amplified! We deal with
more problems, challenges,
highs and lows, good times, bad
times, headaches and hassles, joys
and sorrows in one year than most
people live with in an entire lifetime.
≥≥≥
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Business is an
Amplified Lifestyle
Business is life amplified. I like to say that it’s life on

steroids. We deal with more problems, more challenges, more
highs and lows, more good times and bad times, headaches and
hassles, joys and sorrows, in one year than many people deal
with during their entire lifetimes. Business is an up-and-down,
roller coaster situation; it can be extremely challenging in all
its aspects.
The thing is, everybody wants all the good stuff, but they
don’t want any of the bad stuff that goes with it. That’s part of
the reason why they don’t give it everything they’ve got,
part of the reason why they’re not willing to do whatever it
takes to succeed. They’re trying to protect themselves.
They’re trying to think smaller, because they don’t want to
bring on more problems than they can handle. But come on,
now: problems are a part of life! I doubt that there’s anyone
over the age of 20 reading this who doesn’t know that
instinctively. Life is problems, and problems are life. In
business you get more problems, not fewer—and that’s not
a popular reality. People don’t want to hear that there are
more problems in business than in regular life.
Look, anybody in America who wants to make millions

of dollars can do it. Will most people do it? Absolutely not.
They don’t want to go into the dark places. They don’t want to
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deal with the uncertainties. They don’t want the millions of

dollars worth of headaches that you have to go through to
make millions of dollars. It’s not worth it for them, and I
understand that. Business isn’t for everyone; those people need
jobs. They want to punch in and punch out, so they can have
some time away from work, which is fine. Because if you’re an
entrepreneur, business is with you all the time: It’s a 24/7 thing,
more like being a farmer than anything else. Farmers don’t
have time clocks.
I also think of business as a combination of art, war,

politics, and sports, and maybe religion for some people. It’s
an all-encompassing thing, and a lot of people just don’t get
that, because all they want is the money.
I don’t mean to sound negative here; but you have to

realize that business really is life amplified, all the way around.
Sure, the problems are amplified, but so are the highs! And
it’s certainly not for everybody. One of the problems I see
with a lot of business owners is the fact that they start
working in their business and not on their business. They
wade in and try to handle all those little things that others can
do just as efficiently and more cheaply, and they let those lows
drag them down. There will always be obstacles standing in
your way, folks.
Here’s something that might help you be less negative

about the amplified lifestyle. In the movie Rudy, there’s a scene
where Rudy’s dad is telling Rudy, “Look, you’re a Ruettiger.
You’re going to have to come back to the steel plant and that’s
going to be your life, by God.” And yet Rudy wasn’t going to
do that. He had made up his mind, and he’d made a
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CHAPTER ELEVEN: Business is an Amplified Lifestyle
commitment to his best friend who died in the steel plant, that
he was going to go out there and play football for Notre Dame.
That was his goal, and it was a high, huge goal. Most
everybody in his life told him he wasn’t ever going to
achieve that goal. And yet he did, and of course it’s a very
inspirational story!
Well, business has its own rewards like that, and there will
always be those people in your life who will tell you that you
can’t do something. Too often, you see people that succumb
to that negativity. They let it drag them all the way down.
Well, part of being an American is pulling yourself up by your
bootstraps and getting the job done! Oh, you can get down on
yourself and wallow in self-pity about your problems, whether
they’re of your own making or other people are throwing them
on you. But when it’s your business, your baby, you have to
pull yourself up or fail. Yes, those highs you find are
exceptionally high; but even on the very same day, something
else can happen to throw you in the doldrums. All you can do
is learn from that, move on, and keep striving to do the very
best that you can.
A failure to acknowledge that business is an amplified

lifestyle will set you up for serious pitfalls later on. Business
can be going along great, and then all of a sudden you get
kicked in the gut. Well, that’s life. How you respond to that
says a lot about your character. Whatever you do, though,
don’t set yourself up for more pain than you need. Don’t
ever get caught in the trap of working in your business rather
than on it. If you do that, eventually it’s no longer fun. If you
can’t derive some other enjoyment out of it besides the money
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(assuming you get even that), then what’s the point? You need
to love what you’re doing, so you won’t ever work a day in
your life.
When you can do that, life is fun. That’s the game of it

all.
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CHAPTER TWELVE
usiness levels the

B playing field. Anyone
with a strong desire to get
rich and the willingness to
do whatever it takes —
CAN GET RICH!
117
Business Levels the
Playing Field
Anyone with a strong desire to get rich and the

willingness to do whatever it takes can get rich. It doesn’t
matter what race you are. It doesn’t matter what religion you are.
As long as you’re working in a free market, you can be of any
race, creed, or religion. You can have any body type, be of any
age. None of that matters, because business levels the playing
field. You don’t even need to be blessed with a high I.Q; you
just have to be willing to do whatever it takes. All that business
people have to do is focus on sales.
Here’s a slightly off-color example that I’ve mentioned to

Drew Hanson, my sales manager, before. I don’t mean to offend
anybody, but let’s just say that there’s this 478-pound telephone
salesman working in our office. This guy’s so fat that we’d have
to build special ramps to get him into the building, and we’d
have to wheel him in to his office. And let’s also say that he has
very poor personal hygiene. This is an extreme example here,
but extreme examples are always the best ones. So let’s really
pile it up and say that he’s also the world’s biggest jerk. You get
the picture, right? We have to put him in his own office, keep
him away from the other salespeople. But let’s also say that this
person can sell one out of every two people he talks to; not only
that, but he can upsell one out of three on some other thing. This
guy is the consummate salesman, creating the kind of
revenues for Drew’s sales department that none of the other
119
salespeople can touch.
That being the case, do we care that he weighs 478

pounds, has poor hygiene, and is a big, huge jerk who
offends everybody except for the customers? Do we care if
somebody has to wheel him into the bathroom, if he has special
requirements? Hell no, we don’t care! Business is like that. If
you can produce results, it doesn’t matter who or what you are,
it doesn’t matter what religion you are, it doesn’t matter if
you’re male or female, it doesn’t matter what your age is, it
doesn’t matter what your race is—none of that matters if you
can produce results!
I think that business is the greatest thing there is. Everybody

talks about how unfair things are, and how all these minorities
are getting pushed aside and held down. You have all these
groups that have chips on their shoulders, who think the whole
world is against them. Business levels all of that. Business
knows no race, it knows no creed, and it knows no religion. It
just doesn’t matter; none of that matters. It’s very
encouraging to know that right now on the Forbes 400 list, there
are over a dozen people who started out broke. They started from
poverty, and didn’t even graduate from college. Now they’re
among the 400 richest people in the world. In this day and age,
your net worth has to be one billion dollars just to have the
Number 400 slot on the Forbes list. I find the fact that some of
these billionaires started dirt poor to be encouraging, because
it’s one proof of the leveling aspects of business.
And it is a level playing field. There are so many things

that we point to in the media that are negative or bad about our
country, our political system, the divisiveness in our politics, and
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CHAPTER TWELVE: Business Levels the Playing Field
all that—and yet in the United States we have this great mix of
capitalism, representative democracy, and freedom that doesn’t
care where you came from, what color you are, what class you
were born to. There’s still so much prosperity and opportunity in
this country; even with all the problems we have, it’s better than
many other places in the world today. Look at our nation’s poor.
What is considered poor in this country is considered well-off in
many countries. In most households in our country today, even
those that are officially below the poverty line, you still have a
microwave, a TV, heating and cooling. Yes, there are
drastically poor people in our country; but still, opportunity
absolutely abounds here.
There’s no reason for people to be broke in our country

today. That may seem a blanket statement from the perspective
of the poor, but the opportunities do abound. Does that mean we
don’t have problems? Of course our country has problems.
Maybe more than ever before; maybe not. But we still have
more prosperity and opportunity than just about anybody else on
the planet. We have a system that can still work to produce
prosperity for people who are willing to work for it and get
out there and get it done, regardless of race, color, creed, or
social standing. It’s all because we have that business climate,
and we have a system that promotes capitalism.
And this leads me to another favorite subject, which is

short-term “obscene” profits. There are those in our political
system today who want you to believe that there are rich people
sitting out there on tons of money, and we need to tax them so
that we can pay down this deficit or make sure that you get your
free government cheese. But the people they’re really wanting to
121
tax are the ones who are hiring others. Have you ever gotten a
job from a poor person? No. And are profits obscene when
they’re yours? Of course not. Now, I’m not talking about price
gouging. Somebody who goes into a devastated earthquake zone
and sells a gallon of water for $90, that’s price gouging. But
otherwise there’s no such thing as obscene profits, especially
when the profits are yours.
The equation is simple enough: when revenue exceeds

expenses, you have profits. And there’s nothing wrong with
profits: nothing at all, because it leads to prosperity, and it
leads to more jobs. It leads to a bigger economy. Now, it’s easy
to get worked up when you see able-bodied citizens sitting
around milking off their parents or the government. I’ve got a
problem with supporting that. I don’t want my tax dollars to go
to that, and I don’t want my prosperity to support that. Not to
get on a rant here, but point is there’s too much prosperity in
America for people to be sitting around being sluggos.
It’s easy to look at the older people who say that we’re
getting soft, and we’re letting our founding fathers and our
forefathers down, and think they’re just cantankerous old-timers
who are maybe just sore and cranky. But think about it: maybe
their American experience, and the wisdom that they’re sharing
in their own way, is important. Maybe a lot of us have gotten too
soft. Maybe it has gotten too easy for us, and we need a wake-up
call every now and then to bring us back to our roots—to bring
us back to those areas where we’re willing to pull ourselves up
by the bootstraps, and work to build the life that we want instead
of expecting it to be given to us. You know what? That
prosperity and that spirit is still alive and well, even though
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CHAPTER TWELVE: Business Levels the Playing Field
we have a lot of slackers in our midst. Maybe we need to stop

giving those handouts to everyone, and make them work for it.
That’s where business success comes from. Business is

work, hard work; and it works best if you work smart, too.
That kind of business does level all the playing fields. We hear
so much about jobs, jobs, jobs, and how few are being created,
and how many are being lost. Forget jobs. More people should
just become self-employed. Where did we get this idea that it’s
all about a paycheck mentality? Not everyone is suited to be
self-employed, but so many more of us are than most people
think. God bless all the good employees, but still: a little bit of
free enterprise goes a long way. In fact, I’ll go out on a limb
right now... and I don’t mean to offend anybody. This is just my
opinion, and I could be wrong: but I believe that free enterprise
will save the world. I believe that countries doing business
together will be less likely to want to kill each other.
You see, in business you can hate the people that you do
business with, in some cases; but you still treat them with
respect, and you try to serve their needs. You don’t kill them. I
think this is a solution for the world, and the world economy,
and the whole future for thousands of years to come. Free
enterprise is good diplomacy, because you need to treat your
customers with a certain amount of respect. And even
competitors who hate each other get together at business parties
and other functions and manage to be civil with each other, no
matter how jealous and envious they may be otherwise.
I love business. And you know, when I first started getting

interested in business about 30 years ago, I read a lot of books
about it, and they made it sound so complicated. They still do.
123
My God, I pick those books up and look at them and say, “What
is this nonsense? This is ridiculous, this isn’t a business.” They
make it so complicated... and truthfully, business is simple. It’s
the simplest thing in the world! You’re offering products and
services that people want. You have your marketing, your
management, and your margins. It’s so simple and so
elementary, I wonder why they don’t teach it to little kids from
the time they can understand it—rather than forcing them to
grow up thinking it’s so damned complicated, when it’s not.
Business is simple, and it levels the playing field. It

doesn’t matter who you are, as long as you can do a good job
of selling. That’s all that matters.
124
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
j5i
Ideas are slippery fish!
They come in sudden flashes!
Write them down — fast!
8
125
Ideas are Slippery Fish!
Ideas are like slippery fish: you have to hook them and
pin them down right away, or they’ll escape. They come in
sudden flashes, so you have to write them down or otherwise
record them immediately. You have to grab every single one
that comes your way, no matter how stupid or weird or
unworkable you may think it may be... because sometimes,
those are the very best ones. You see, it all comes down to
creativity.
I’ve discussed this before in other Ways. Look: people start

off being so creative. When we’re kids, we have so many great
ideas! Little kids are all amazingly creative. We tend to lose that
as we grow older and become focused on certain things. But
creativity is something you can work on: so sit down and
brainstorm, take a lot of notes, come up with a lot of
different ideas. I keep legal pads all around my house. My staff
gives me a Christmas gift every year, and this past year I told
them I just wanted legal pads, because I was about ready to run
out and I needed a few cases. I know I’ll put them to work. It’ll
be the gift that keeps on giving all year, because I write ideas
down constantly.
Why do I do that? Because, again, quantity leads to quality.

The more ideas you have, the more good ideas you have.
Professional photographers sometimes have to take hundreds or
thousands of pictures before they find one or two that make it
127
into the magazine or onto the website. Same with ideas: the
more the better. And your best ideas don’t come when you’re
sitting on your ass, either, unless you’re sitting on your ass
working on your projects, generally behind a computer. They
come when you’re actively engaged. When you’re in the thick
of a certain project, oftentimes that’s when your ideas for the
next project will come to you.
Here’s a quote that means so much to me that I want to

repeat it, even though I’ve mentioned it in other Ways already.
Remember, confusion and frustration are part of the game, but
here’s the quote: “You go as far as you can see, and then, when
you get there, you can see even further.” Your best ideas will
come to you as you’re moving forward, going as far as you
can see, putting things together. When you get past one hurdle
there will be all these new ideas and you’ll wonder, “Where
were they before?”
It’s a process: You just keep moving forward, working on

your business, not in it. Just come up with ideas, and learn
what works best for you. One of the things that works best for
me in terms of generating ideas is sitting in the shower drinking
coffee, as I’ve mentioned elsewhere. (It’s a little silly, I know,
but that’s okay: if it works for one person besides me, it’s worth
sharing.) When I wake up in the morning, the first thing I do is
make myself some coffee. The second thing I do is turn on the
shower. Then, I’ll sit in the shower drinking my coffee, letting
the hot water hit me, constantly thinking.
I’m thinking about my projects, I’m thinking about the

different ideas I’m working on—and I need answers. I’m
confused about some things. I’m frustrated about other things.
And you know, the answers do come to me. Creativity is a
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CHAPTER THIRTEEN: Ideas Are Slippery Fish
magical thing; some of these ideas just seem to appear out of the
blue. But they really do come, because you’re working on
lots of different projects; you’re thinking consistently, you
have lots of different pieces of the puzzle put together, and
then all of a sudden, Bam! They come together into some
great ideas.
All you need at any particular point is just enough ideas

to keep you moving. You don’t have to have some grand five-
year or ten-year plan for your business. All you need is a three-
month plan, or even just a 30-day plan. Again, it’s like driving at
night. If you can see 50 or 100 yards ahead of you all the time,
you can drive hundreds of miles with no real problem.
You never know when that next great idea is going to hit
you... and if you don’t capture them, they will escape. I know
that for a fact, because there have been times when I haven’t
written down great ideas, and I’ve lost them. They’ve
happened in the middle of the night or in the shower, for
example, and I couldn’t write them down. Chris Hollinger tells
me he’s even written stuff in the steam on his bathroom mirror
when he didn’t want to forget it and didn’t have anything to
write on. He’s even gone back there and steamed up the
bathroom again, just so he could see what he had written! And
then, of course, the idea comes back to him.
Have you ever had one of those times in your life were
things were just clicking? You were learning something brand
new, and it was exciting, it was fresh, and your mind was on
fire? That’s something that happens in the amplified life of
business. These ideas come to you, and maybe you can apply
them and maybe you can’t; but you write them down just
the same. That’s a good habit to have, whether you end up ever
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implementing them or not.
Right now, for example, Chris Hollinger and his wife are
creating a brand new program, as I’ve mentioned; they’ve been
putting a lot of energy into that, and Chris tells me that his wife
has been coming up with a lot of outrageously crazy ideas. Some
of them are fantastic; they might have nothing to do with their
business, but if they could apply them, man, would that be cool!
And is there a market for some of them? Yes, there is. So she’s
going through this phase where she’s writing down all these
ideas that she wants them to try. Maybe she and Chris will get
around to implementing some of them; maybe they won’t.
But she’s having a good time coming up with them, and the
thing is, if you don’t write them down then they’re gone forever.
They’re slippery critters.
And again, the more ideas you have, the more good ideas
you have. Just think about that: quantity leads to quality. Try
to get on the other side of the cash register. Study what other
people are doing with their marketing; steal ideas. You know,
one of the reasons that I’ve been so impressed with Mr.
Hollinger is that he’s a great student of the field. He and people
like him look around and see all these possibilities, and they take
a little bit from here, and a little bit from there, and so they
incorporate the best ideas that other people are using into their
own business models.
That’s very, very smart. You see, ideas aren’t copyrightable.

If you find an idea that somebody is using, and it’s a good
idea, then find a way to use it yourself; find a way to make it
better. Never plagiarize, but do find a legal and ethical way to
copy others.
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CHAPTER FOURTEEN
he greatest
T entrepreneurs tend to
be the worst managers.
The skills it takes to build
a business are usually the
opposite of the skills it
takes to manage it.
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The Greatest Entrepreneurs
Tend to Be the
Worst Managers
I learned this one the hard way... well, I learned all of
these things the hard way, but this one in particular! And here’s
what I learned: that the skills it takes to build a business are
the opposite of the skills it takes to manage it. My wife Eileen
is a great managerial-type business person, and I’m not. But I
didn’t know that at first. The entire 14 years that she ran the
company, from 1988 through 2001, I always thought I could do
a better job. I kept it to myself for the most part, but that’s what
I believed.
And then, after she stepped down for health reasons, I tried
to run the day-to-day operations for about two and a half years—
and it was the worse period of my life. I found out the hard way
entrepreneurs can be good in some roles, but bad in others.
Pure entrepreneurs have strengths; they do serve a vital role,
especially for growing businesses. But once the businesses are
mature, entrepreneurs are basically useless in the day-to-day
handling of the fine details. They’re terrible managers.
It takes certain skills to bring in money, you see. But

those skills are usually the opposite of the skills it take to
manage. One of the reasons my wife is such a good manager is
that she’s the queen of stability. You could set your watch by the
woman; I often know what she’s going to say before she says it.
She’s just so stable, so consistent, and those are the kinds of
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qualities it takes to run a business from day to day. The

qualities it takes to bring in all the money are more
entrepreneurial: the skill of the salesperson, the hunter.
So when it comes to making money, getting it and

keeping it require two completely different skill sets. I had to
learn that the wrong way. You see, entrepreneurs tend to be
wild-eyed dreamers, kind of crazy people. They’re not known
for their stability, necessarily, and when it comes being a good
manager that quality is absolutely necessary. I spent two and a
half years of my life learning this one the hard way.
Yet so many people are trying to wear all the hats in

their businesses, which causes some big problems. They’re
trying everything in their businesses themselves. Now, a good
business is sort of like a clock. Think of an old-fashioned
timepiece, where if you take off the backing you can see all the
gears working away in there. Some of those gears are big and
some are small, but you take out any one of them, the whole
thing quits working. It could be the tiniest, cheapest gear in
there, and if you take it out, the mechanism stops. That’s how a
business is. It requires different talents from different people
working together to create synergy. It’s a team effort.
I think my friend Chris Hollinger’s business is a good

example. He tells me his wife provides certain things that he
lacks, the same as with Eileen and I. He says she’s generally the
stabilizing influence—the rudder to the ship, whereas he’s the
motor boat. She’s trying to steer a stable, straight course for their
enterprises. And he says that they work as a team not only in
their business, but in their marriage as well. Her skill set
compliments his, filling in where he’s lacking, and vice versa.
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CHAPTER FOURTEEN: Great Entrepreneurs Tend to Be the Worst Managers
That’s been a benefit to their business, and it’s a great model for
what I’m talking about here.
You see, a successful business must include someone

with the skill set and the mentality of a creator and
motivator, the person who has all the ideas and can get
themselves and others motivated to achieve those ideas. And
then there’s the person who can contribute substance and
structure and stability to an organization, as well as
discipline when that’s necessary. I’m talking about financial
discipline especially. It’s rare that you find someone that can do
all of that in business, which is why I feel that my earlier gear
analogy is appropriate here.
Part of becoming successful is becoming aware of your

limitations, so that you can work around them. You need to
be willing to go out and find the people you need to counter
your limitations, and team up with them so that you can acquire
the skill sets you don’t already have on your side. No one is
perfect in and of themselves. There was once a Roman emperor,
Marcus Aurelius; he was godlike within his empire, but he was
smart enough have a servant who followed him wherever he
went to tell him, repeatedly, “You’re just a man.” That’s all the
servant did; his job was to keep Marcus Aurelius grounded.
So be willing to acknowledge the fact that you might not

be good at certain things. I know a lot of people (men in
particular) who have trouble acknowledging that fact, and it’s
always to their detriment—in their personal relationships as well
as in their businesses. I say, your greatest strength is to know
your weaknesses. When you know your weaknesses, you can
delegate tasks to people who are strong in the areas you’re weak
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in. That’s what a business is: a team. It’s a synergistic effort of

people who come together for mutual benefit, and each has
their role to play. Together, all the people on the team are
smarter than any one of them, and that’s a very powerful thing.
Also, you have to consider the reality that, in a way, every

strength is a weakness. People who are very strong in one area
are often weak in an opposite area. And yes, the people who are
really good at something make it look so easy. That’s why for
14 years, I thought I could kick my wife’s butt at being a
business manager: she made it look so damn easy. That’s what
happens when you find people who are good at anything, so
find the most talented people that you can find. Recognize
that if you’re strongly entrepreneurial, you’re probably a
lousy manager.
Don’t waste years of your life, like I did, finding that out.
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CHAPTER FIFTEEN
f
The best stories to use in your
sales material are before-and-
after stories.
This is a powerful sales formula. The
story tells about the problem and then
it introduces the solution. Next it
shows the great life-changing benefit.
The reader puts himself into the story
and is sold!
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The Value of
Before-and-After Stories
The best stories to use in your sales material are before-

and-after stories. This is a powerful sales formula, because it
first outlines the problem and then introduces the solution.
Next, it shows the life-changing benefits, in such a way that
the reader is able to put himself or herself into the story,
which allows them to be sold.
I want to start this section by talking about stories in

general; then, I’ll give you a few examples of how we use
stories as part of our ongoing marketing effort at M.O.R.E., Inc.
I’ll tell you about the one story that’s made us millions and
millions of dollars, and continues to work and will always
make us money, no matter what. This is another of those
secrets that really is a secret, because it’s obvious that most
people just don’t get it... and even those who do often aren’t
using it to their fullest advantage. Heck, it’s possible that we
don’t either. Though we certainly use this formula a lot, we
could probably use it even more than we do.
While the best stories are before-and-after stories,

stories in general do an amazing job of letting people put
themselves into the picture you’re painting. It lets people use
the power of their imagination. People remember stories,
because stories touch them emotionally. They help people
understand complicated issues, too, since we’re all trained to
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listen to stories. The truth is, nobody really wants to listen to

your sales message. The last thing people want is to be sold
something. But they do want to hear stories; they’ll happily
listen then, because they enjoy them and have been listening to
them since they were kids. Their sales resistance is lowered.
That’s why all of your sales messages have to be buried within
the story. It’s a method of soft selling.
As a rule, people have this invisible shield they put up

around themselves. You can’t see it, but it’s very real. That
shield rejects most sales messages because, quite frankly,
they’re trying to hold onto their money. They know you’re
trying to pitch them something, and they don’t want to be sold.
That’s why you use stories to explain complicated things, to
make it easy for people to want to listen to the advantages
and benefits that you have to offer. You do it as a way of
breaking the ice a little. People are uptight when they know
you’re giving them a sales presentation, so a nice story relaxes
them and it lets you do an effective job of selling. Just like every
other skill, you can get better at it with practice.
Here are some examples of how we use stories. Let’s start

with something very recent. Chris Lakey and I are getting ready
to introduce a whole new type of opportunity to our clients. We
came up with a name for this opportunity that’s built around a
story that we want to tell. The name of the opportunity is the
“$400 Million in 72 Months Secret,” or at least I think that’s
probably what we’ll call it. Because people want to hear
secrets. They don’t necessarily want to hear a plan, but they
definitely want to hear secrets! This opportunity is built around
the story of a company in New York that was started 72 months
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CHAPTER FIFTEEN: The Value of Before-and-After Stories
ago, and has already generated over $400 million in revenue. We

tell the story, and then we show them how the new opportunity
we’re inviting them to be a part of offers many of the same
advantages—yet, it’s different and better in some ways. By
using this story of the 72-month success, we’re able to tie our
opportunity in with their opportunity. That’s one of the great
things that a story allows you to do. It’s easy for people to
remember, and it has the honesty of credibility along with it.
Again, you’re able to explain one thing by comparing it with
something else.
People like stories. They like hearing about extremely

successful companies that have discovered something
incredible. They want to hear all the inside facts, and that’s
exactly what we’re going to give them. But what we’re also
going to do is wrap it around our new opportunity and show
people the comparisons, and how what we have is even
better. I hope you can see how this story gives us a great way to
present something new, by talking about something that’s 72
months old and has a history of real success. By calling our
opportunity by the name of our story, people will remember it.
They’ll remember that “$400 Million in 72 Months,” because
people do remember stories.
Here’s another example of how we use stories on a day-to-

day basis. We have a special business within our business called
our Five Star Mailing Service. We create and send out direct
mail postcards and small direct mail letters for our clients. We
sell that service by telling people about our own success with
direct mail. We tell them the story about how we first got
started with space ads in national magazines, then met Russ von
141
Hoelscher six months later. Russ helped us go from making

$16,000 a month to almost $400,000 a month, by giving us the
best of the best of his secrets. We tell people that out of all of
those secrets, the one that’s made us more money than
anything else is direct mail marketing. Then we talk a bit
about the $100 million in total revenue that we generated in
our first 19 years alone—again, primarily through direct mail
marketing. Next, we tell them about our Five Star Mailing
Service, which incorporates the best of everything we’ve
learned since we first started using direct mail back in 1989.
People remember this story. It’s a before-and-after

story; before we started direct mail, we were bringing in about
$500 a day, or $16,000 a month. After direct mail, we were
generating almost $100,000 a week, within nine months of Russ
getting us started. That’s easy for people to remember, and it
helps drive the point home. Direct mail is a powerful way to
make millions of dollars. We’ve done it, so we’ve got the
credibility, the knowledge, and the experience that our
clients need if they want to do what we did. That story has
been very, very helpful to us.
We’ve also got a special project we’re putting together right

now called our ATM websites. ATM is an acronym for
“Automatic Transporter Method,” but we also tell people it’s
the next best thing to having their own money machine—so it
was only appropriate to call it the ATM. We show them a
picture of the ATM machine at our local bank. We talk about how
great it would be if you could own your own personal money
machine, and this just helps people to fire up their imaginations.
You see, that’s part of what makes stories so wonderful.

142
People listen to them, and then they see things in their own
mind’s eye. Their imagination kicks in. If you’re just trying to
preach at people, their minds might wander off in another
direction. They might tune you out. But by telling them a story,
their brain becomes engaged and alive, and they get with the
plan, so to speak. They get excited and the emotions kick in, so
you’re able to sell them without them realizing they’ve been
sold. And that’s very important, because while people like to
discover and buy things, they want to think of those discoveries
as their own discoveries, as if they’re making these important
breakthroughs on their own. Nobody wants something pushed
down their throat; they’ll resist that. In order to sell people,
you have to break through that resistance.
The principle we call the Four Cornerstones of Wealth is

another way we use stories to help sell things. I won’t go into
them here, except to say that we tell people that there are four
things you need if you want to get wealthy, and then we proceed
to use visual analogies in a construction sense—where
cornerstones are an important part of a foundation. But then we
also tell people the story of how we’ve used all four of those
things to get rich ourselves. This helps them assimilate that
knowledge better, and it makes the principle more credible.
People are open and receptive to the concept. We’re making it
easy for them to see that if they just had the same four things that
we had, they could potentially have all the money that they want,
too. That makes it really easy for us to sell those ideas. And then,
of course, whatever opportunity we may be promoting, we show
how that opportunity includes those four elements.
As you can see, we don’t just start out by selling our
143
opportunity, or our products or services. We start out with

something they want to hear about, in this case the Four
Cornerstones of Wealth. They want to be educated a bit. They
want to find out what these four things are that they need to
get wealthy. That’s how we start the presentation, and then we
relate a story about how we had all four of those things in our
own lives. This makes it so much easier for them, when it comes
time to show them how what we’re offering lets them tap into all
four of those things. Their minds can grasp it now. When people
are resisting, they can’t grasp anything.
Incidentally, the way that you say something is often even

more important than what you say. It’s all about the presentation.
And that’s what stories allow you to do: a much better job of
presenting. So let me tell you the story that’s made us God only
knows how many tens of millions of dollars. It’s the story that
built our company, and it’s the story that continues to make
us money. It’s our rags-to-riches story.
For years, my wife Eileen and I sent away for every

business and money making opportunity we could get our hands
on. Our names were on all the mailing lists; everybody was
sending us all kinds of plans. There were sales letters and ads
and postcards for their plans coming in the mail every day,
trying to convince us that they had the secret that could make us
rich, if only we gave them enough money. For years we
struggled; and it was frustrating, it was confusing. Our friends
and family laughed at us, and told us we were foolish and crazy
to think that we could get rich. And yet we refused to listen to all
those naysayers. We continued to believe in our dreams—and
eventually, because we didn’t give up, we found just the
144
right combination of products and services and

opportunities. Within five years, we had generated over $10
million in total revenue.
We tell our clients that they can do the same: that if they
refuse to quit, if they’ll just stop listening to all the naysayers in
their life, if they continue to keep their minds open, they can
have the same kind of success that we’ve had. Heck, their
success could make ours pale by comparison. I’ve told that
story thousands of times, in various ways. I know it
instinctively; that story is a part of me now. And the reason I tell
it so often to our clients is because it’s the greatest before-and-
after story I know. They want to be in that story themselves;
they identify with that story.
They really are just like us. Their names are on all the
mailing lists, and when they go to their mailboxes they pull out
the same kinds of get-rich-quick sales letters and postcards that
we used to. Our story lets them bond with us. It lets them
identify with us. It builds a rapport. It lets them see that it is
possible if they just don’t quit, like we didn’t quit. That story
has been worth millions of dollars to us.
So think deeply about the value of telling stories. Think

about the main selling points that you want to get across. When
we started our multilevel marketing company, Club-20
International, we told all kinds of stories about the ways we
were different from a traditional multilevel company. Each story
represented a point of differentiation between us and the
competition. Comparisons, analogies, metaphors, and really
good storytelling: these are the secrets to selling people who
don’t want to be sold, although they do love to buy things.
145
Get good at it, keep practicing it, and stay aware of it—
especially when somebody’s using a story on you.
Here’s a story that’s been worth a billion dollars—literally.

It’s a two-page sales letter that earned the Wall Street Journal
over $1 billion in revenue. It simply told a story about two
young men who graduated college, with both of them equal in
every way. But one of these young men subscribed to the Wall
Street Journal, and the other did not. And now, 20 years later,
the subscriber is a multimillionaire and the other one is a mid-
level manager—a Dilbert-like character who’s nameless,
faceless, just an average Joe. People liked that story; they
remembered it, and it made the Wall Street Journal a fortune.
Copywriter after copywriter tried to beat that letter—and it

was the control at the Wall Street Journal for many years,
because no copywriter ever could. It may sound a little stupid—
and yet we’re talking about how important emotions are,
and how to drive your message right into the heart of that
emotion, and there’s nothing that does it like a good story. So
think about the story that generated millions for our little
company, and then think of that story that generated over $1
billion for the Wall Street Journal... and think about ways that
you can tell emotional stories, too.
To reiterate the original point, the best stories to use in

your sales material are before-and-after stories. That’s
basically what the Wall Street Journal story is. This is a
powerful sales formula. The story describes the problem, and
then it introduces the solution, and next it shows the great life-
changing benefit, therefore putting the reader in the story, where
they can see getting the result themselves.
146
One of the former vice presidents for Walt Disney, Alan

Kay, has said this: “Why was King Solomon recognized as the
wisest man in the world? Because he knew many more stories or
proverbs than anyone else. Scratch the surface in a typical
boardroom, and we’re all just cavemen with briefcases, hungry
for a wise person to tell us stories.” Before I even found that
quote, I was already thinking about stories being used
historically, and immediately one of the things I thought about
was storytelling in the Bible. Those stories have influenced our
culture for thousands of years. But storytelling has been
around for much, much longer than that; ever since there’s
been a story to be told, there’s been someone there telling it.
People who have knowledge, who have learned a lot or

have a lot of personal experiences, have a lot of stories to tell.
Someone lacking in experience doesn’t have many stories.
When you look at a young child versus an older person, there’s a
big difference in the stories they tell. A high school kid’s
experiences are very limited in scope. They don’t have many
responsibilities. They haven’t lived much life so far, and the
stories they’re able to tell are very minimal. On the other hand,
someone who’s lived a long life and experienced a lot, who’s
traveled the world—they’ve seen a lot of things. They’ve got a
lot of stories to tell. So your stories have a lot to do with how
many years you’ve lived, and how much you’ve experienced
during that time.
A fellow named Lawrence Shapiro once wrote a book

called How to Raise a Child with a High EQ, where EQ is
emotional intelligence. At one point in the book he says, “Many
people don’t realize the extent to which stories influence our
147
behavior, and even shape our culture. Think about how Bible
stories teach the fundamentals of religion and rules of conduct.
Think of the fables and parables that molded your values. Think
about how stories about your national, cultural, or family history
have all shaped your attitudes about yourself and other people.”
As Shapiro points out, we really take these stories to heart.
They become a part of our life experience, a part of who we
are; they’re in our cultural DNA, really. Some stories, of
course, aren’t that important to us; when we hear one like that, it
doesn’t have much impact. But there are other stories that have a
lifelong impact, and they really do shape who you are.
So again: getting back to the original intent of storytelling

for sales purposes, you want to use stories to relate to people,
to get them to understand the before-and-after of the benefits
of using your product or service. The stories that will result in
the most sales are life-impacting stories. In our business, we
sell business opportunities and help people make money from
home. Well, we know that our marketplace is looking for life
change: they’re looking for something that can have a dramatic
impact on their lives, so a story about someone else who
experienced the results they want to experience will stick in their
minds. They want that story to be their story. They’re already
somewhere in the story, actually. Maybe it’s a story about
someone who didn’t have success and struggled for years, and
then finally achieved success; they see themselves in that. They
become a part of the story, and they want the solution—e.g., the
end result that you shared with them in the story.
This is especially applicable if the story is a true one. Now,

there are different kinds of stories, such as fables or parables,
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that aren’t real— but they’re useful because they illustrate a

point. That said, the very best stories to use when you’re
trying to sell a product or a service, and promising a certain
benefit or solution to a problem, are true stories about
someone else who achieved the results that your prospect is
looking for. That makes it easy for the prospects to see
themselves receiving the benefits the person in the story
received, so they want to jump into the story themselves. In
short, the story helps the prospect internalize and
personalize that benefit. They want to be that story, and that
makes them more interested in responding.
Western writer Louis L’Amour once said, “A writer’s brain

is like a magician’s hat. If you’re going to get anything out of it,
you have to put something in it first.” I thought that was an
interesting quote, because with a magician’s hat, of course,
you’re not really going to just pull a rabbit out of nowhere.
That’s not real. A magician’s hat has to be filled with the rabbit
before the rabbit can come out. As a writer, your goal is to fill
your brain with all kinds of experiences that enable you to
tell the stories you tell. If you’ve never filled it up, if you’ve
never read a lot, if you’ve never experienced life, then you’re
going to be lacking in the story department.
So be sure you’re well-read at least. Even if you don’t

like to read, try to read a lot of biographies. Read about people
who’ve done things and achieved success, especially in your
specific marketplace. Even those secondhand experiences will
become valuable stories for you to tell as you craft sales letters,
as you sell from a platform, or do phone-selling. Anytime
you’re face-to-face or one-on-one with a prospect, you’ve
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got the ability to use stories to make the sale. Your writer’s
brain, your storytelling brain, your sales brain, is a lot like that
magician’s hat in L’Amour’s quote. To get something out of it,
you’ve got to put something in it first.
Here’s another great quote, this time by Mark Twain:

“Don’t say, ‘The old lady screamed.’ Bring her on and let her
scream.” His point is that the more dramatic you can be with
your stories, the better. He’s saying, don’t just talk about
something: make it real. In your storytelling, be as
descriptive as possible. You may not actually be able to have a
lady there screaming, but you can describe it as best as you can.
Use very colorful, descriptive language as you describe the
events of the story. Don’t be boring!
You’ve probably been in situations where you’re sitting

around a table or you’re at dinner with people, and there’s a
story being told. Then, someone else jumps in who says, “No,
no, no, you’re telling it all wrong.” Then they proceed to tell the
story their way. It’s the same story, but one of them is telling it
in a boring way, and people are sleeping. The other one says no,
no, that’s not how it happened, and then they tell the same
story—and everybody’s laughing and wide awake. They’re
hanging on every word. What’s the difference? Simple: one
person was telling the story in a straightforward, unexciting
way, and the other person was livening it up, using lots of
adjectives and describing things in full detail. He was laying
out exactly what was happening, and making people hang on
every word. That’s the power of good storytelling: getting
people to want to pay attention to what you’re saying.
In the book The Art of Storytelling, Nancy Mellon points

150
out that because there’s a natural storytelling urge and ability

in all human beings, even just a little nurturing of this
impulse can bring about astonishing and delightful results.
As I was reading that quote, I was thinking about kids. Chris
Lakey has six of them, and they’re all great storytellers. Kids do
tend to be storytellers, even though they lack experience.
They’ve got stories that are true and stories that are all in their
minds, and they’re very real either way. They’ll tell you the
story in full detail. As we mature, though, a lot of us lose the
ability to tell good stories. We’ve lost that natural urge. I think
that’s what Nancy Mellon was talking about. Just a little
nurturing of this impulse can bring about astonishing results.
So as you think about writing sales copy, remember that

being a good copywriter, just like being a good salesman, is a
skill that can be developed. In a similar way, storytelling is
something that can be nurtured. You have the ability to practice
the art of storytelling by telling lots of stories. The first thing
required is to be knowledgeable: to have lots of information, lots
of inputs into the brain. Mixed with life experience, that
becomes the foundation of the ability to tell stories. The
natural storytelling urge is there. You just have to nurture it, to
get that ability to pull a story out of your hat to become a part of
who you are. That way, there’s always something there, for
every situation.
The writer Studs Terkel once pointed out, “People are

hungry for stories. It’s part of our very being. Storytelling is
a form of history; of immortality, too. It goes from one
generation to another.” People are hungry for stories. They
love telling them, and they love hearing them. Whenever you’re
151
sitting around with family or a bunch of your buddies, you’re

telling stories, right? You’re just sitting there having a good
time, telling stories. Stories are a part of everybody’s daily life.
We all tell stories. We’re either telling them, or we’re listening
to them. It’s a part of our social fabric, our social DNA. It’s how
we pass things on from one generation to another. I know stories
about my family’s history because my parents told them to me.
We know about our history as a nation because people have
passed down stories and written things about our great-great-
grandparents and how they fought in this or that war, how they
overcame this or that or didn’t, whatever the case may be.
That desire, not only for people to hear stories but for
people to tell them, should become a part of your ability to make
sales. As people read or hear your stories, they identify with
you; it builds a bond. People laugh over stories, they drink over
stories. Sometimes they cry over stories. That storytelling builds
a bridge; it builds a connection.
Chris Lakey sold cars for about a year, once. One of the
things they always teach you in car sales is to get the person
talking about who they are—get them telling stories. Find some
common ground. Do you like doing something they like doing?
Do you both enjoy playing golf? Is there some hobby you’re
both interested in? You can’t know until you tell some stories
and build a bond with the prospect. They’ll like you and trust
you faster if you have stories to build that bridge than if
you don’t.
The writer Robert Fulghum came up with something

called “The Storyteller’s Creed,” which I feel is appropriate
to this discussion. It goes like this: “I believe that
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imagination is stronger than knowledge. That myth is more

potent than history. That dreams are more powerful than
facts. That hope always triumphs over experience. That
laughter is the only cure for grief. And I believe that love is
stronger than death.”
Who knows how widely accepted that is among

storytellers? But it’s interesting to think about, especially those
first three statements. “I believe that imagination is stronger than
knowledge. That myth is more potent than history. That dreams
more powerful than facts.” So imagination, myth, dreams, and
stories are stronger than knowledge, history and facts. When you
talk about these things, you’re talking about parables, or fake
stories. You’re not talking about true stories. Think about the
fables of Aesop, or the parables in the Bible. The goal of these
stories is to make an important point. The right example,
related through a parable, can be more powerful than facts
or knowledge.
So, instead of spending all your time and your sales copy
spouting off numbers, talking about facts and other things that
make people full of knowledge, spend some of your time telling
stories. Spend your time talking about the way things could
be, or the way things should be. You’re encouraging people to
daydream, to imagine receiving all the benefits that this product
will deliver on. You’re saying, “How would your life be better if
you used this product? Let’s dream a little.” That kind of
imagination in storytelling can help you make more sales,
because you’ll build those bonds with your prospects a lot faster.
They’ll trust you more quickly, which lays the foundation for
you to makes more sales.
153
Again, we’re talking especially about before-and-after

stories, which can be real or fictional, depending on the point
you’re trying to get across. If your story’s fictional, that’s fine,
as long as you tell people it is. Don’t try to pass something off as
real when it’s not; make it clear you’re using a parable or fable.
But don’t hesitate to use true stories to make the point that your
prospect is experiencing a certain unpopular or painful
experience, when they could be receiving the benefits and the
results you’re promising them through your offers. It’s the way
things are now and the way things could be, or should be,
that you’re trying to explain to them.
So remember: your brain really is like a magician’s hat, as

odd as that may sound. To get anything out of it, you’ve got to
put something in it first. You’ve got to have a lot of experiences
to pull from. Either read up on other people’s stories, or live the
adventure yourself. You’ve got to have stories to tell, so you can
sell more stuff to more people for more profits. And once you
have those stories, how do you use them? Well, there’s a popular
copywriting formula called the PAS formula.
PAS is an acronym that stands for Problem, Agitate,

Solution. The Problem is the pain that you remind people
they’re dealing with. A, you agitate the problem—you make it
hurt more as you force them to face it head-on. And then the S
is when you introduce your solution to that painful problem,
whether that’s a product, service, opportunity, your company,
or yourself. When you get on the other side of the cash
register and start thinking like a marketer, you’ll see all
kinds of individuals and companies using this very simple
formula. In TV commercials, you see it frequently, especially
154
if they’re direct response marketing commercials. You see the

actor frustrated about something; maybe they have to chop up
all these vegetables by hand, and they’re crying because of the
onions. That’s the problem. Then they agitate the whole thing,
trying to make it personal, before viola! They introduce that
solution.
That’s what you do when you write copy: you try to tell
stories. Stories help to agitate the situation. Again, they slip
under the radar, and they become personalized, internalized.
That’s what the agitation process is. And then you reveal the
solution. When using that PAS Formula, simply write down the
main problems that your product or service or company or you
solve, and then think of as many different stories as you can that
help to illustrate that problem, which is the agitation part.
You’re wanting them to put themselves in the picture. Only
once you’ve done that do you introduce the solution.
When we tell people our million-dollar story, we talk about

all of the pain and frustration we went through. That’s part of the
agitation, because again, our clients are going through that same
type of thing themselves. They’re frustrated, they’re confused,
they’re looking for solutions, and they’re not really finding
them. By telling them our story, we agitate things and make
it all real for them. Again, you have to subject yourself to a lot
of different sales material to see how other people are using this.
But stories are just amazingly powerful. All of the great
religions are built on stories. Politicians use stories all the time.
And let’s take a closer look at that. Politicians love to bring

up stories of certain people who supposedly represent the kind
of person who’s struggling with the same issues that they’re
155
promising to help overcome. Joe the Plumber was a big one in

an election a while back. Just some guy named Joe who was a
plumber, and they just started picking up his story. Everybody
started using that to try to illustrate how they could solve these
problems that Joe the Plumber was having. You see politicians
do that all the time, because it helps to personalize things.
And you see it in the news all the time. In fact, the news is
really just one story after another. That’s all. And I don’t
necessarily enjoy watching the news; I have lots of problems
with it, personally. But my wife watches the news, and since I
live in the same house she lives in, I’m constantly around it.
And I watch her. She likes watching the news, and she gets
pulled emotionally into these stories. Every night during the
news, at least one time, my wife is crying. Now, she doesn’t sit
there and bawl, but she’s crying. These stories are reaching
her emotionally.
They’re part of what being alive is all about, those

emotions. If you take the emotions out of life, there is no life.
Stories are emotional things, and people love hearing them
for that reason. Imagination and dreams and myths and love
and drama: all those are emotional things. Those are all things
that tug at the heartstrings. And you must never forget that
people buy emotionally; so that’s how we have to reach out
to them, just as the news does. All those great stories help
connect us with people.
There are a several shows that Eileen and I watch that are
supposed to be news shows, but they’re really not. They’re soft
news, like Dateline and 48 Hours and such. Well, my Mom
watches those shows, too. I talk to my Mom on the phone
156
several times every week, and these stories help give us

something to talk about. It’s a connection we have: we both
watch the same story, and now we can talk about it.
So think about that. Stories are a part of our lives, every

single day. And the people who are the greatest
communicators are often the greatest storytellers. Case in
point: a friend of ours, Russ von Hoelscher. He’s one of the best
storytellers I’ve ever met. He just has a way about it. Whether
he’s consciously developed those skills or not, I don’t know; but
I do know that some people seem natural at it, and are just better
at it than others. Ross has certain stories that I’ve heard him tell
maybe a dozen times or more, but I always like to hear them,
and I’ll even encourage him to tell the stories again.
For example: we were in Dallas, Texas in August 2010 for

our Wealth Explosion seminar, and we were all eating lunch
together. After lunch, things hit a bit of a lull and the
conversation ran dry. So I said, “Russ, tell the story about this.
Tell the story about that.” He loves telling stories, as I think all
good storytellers do. They wouldn’t be good if they didn’t enjoy
it. Ross enjoys getting everybody to laugh, and his stories are
full of dramatics and details. Again, that’s the kind of thing
that helps you put your prospect in the picture; it helps them
see things and remember the story better. It’s human nature to
want to keep hearing the same stories again and again, because
they’re fun to listen to, especially if they’re related to subjects
that are of interest to you. In this case, in Dallas, we were there
with a number of speakers, and the speakers who hadn’t heard
Russ’ stories before really enjoyed them. Everybody wants to be
around a great storyteller.
157
That’s why your job is to be a great storyteller, so you

won’t be one of those people who just bores everybody to
death—the kind of person where, when you walk in a room,
everybody’s trying to avoid you. Nobody can stand being
around you because all you do is talk, talk, talk, without ever
saying anything imaginative, creative, or fun. A great
storyteller, they’re also talking nonstop—and yet what they’re
saying is fun to listen to, it’s exciting, and you just can’t seem
to get enough of it. All the great entertainers are great
storytellers; they have to be, because storytelling is a part of
entertaining. And people want to be entertained more than
anything. That’s why the richest people in the world, except for
some CEOs, are entertainers.
One of my mentors is a consultant, and I’ve paid him well

over $100,000. He’s worth every penny; he’s helped me a great
deal. And in hindsight, one of the reasons I’ve paid him so much
money is that he’s an amazing storyteller. I know probably 20 or
30 of his stories that he’s told me or that I’ve learned from some
of his audio programs and his books. They’re great stories. I
remember them, and they’re all stories that mean something
to me. They all make a point that’s helped me. I’m convinced
that one of the biggest reasons I’ve paid this gentleman so much
money over the years—for various seminars, and consulting,
and coaching groups that I’ve been a part of, and the books and
all that—is because he’s an amazing communicator with an
incredible ability to tell stories.
That doesn’t happen by accident. Some storytellers make it

sound so effortless, and yet, they’ve spent countless hours
thinking things through and working on their delivery. So don’t
158
let them fool you; otherwise you might be intimidated, thinking,

“Oh my God, I’ll never be able to tell stories like that.” But you
can. Think things through and look for things that are
dramatic, things that will stick in people’s brains, and use
them in your sales copy and pitches.
Stories influence people. They get people to do things that

they wouldn’t normally do, had it not been for the story. Let’s
look at one of those stories Russ told back in Dallas; it’s one of
his best, and I’d heard it before. In fact, I’ve mentioned it before
in the 500 Ways! After we had lunch on the first day, Russ said,
“T.J., before this event is over, I need to tell you about a really
important project that can make both of us a lot of money.” And
I said, “How about right now?” Because I didn’t know what was
going to happen, given the rest of the schedule. We might both
get really busy and lose track of it.
There was another speaker in the room. He said, “Oh, I

have to go do something, anyway.” He left the room, and Russ
told me a story about a lady he met 15 years ago who had an
idea for a product. He was speaking at a $5,000 event, and at
break time, after his presentation, she came up to him and she
showed him this product she had. He didn’t think it was that
good, and he started trying to discourage her just a little. He
gave her a couple ideas for selling it, but his whole theme to her
was, “Keep your day job.” And she said, “No, Russ, you don’t
understand. I’ve already sold over a million and a half of these.”
That blew him away.
And then he proceeded to tell me how the moneymaking

idea he was proposing was even better than the idea that this
lady had profited from. And once he told me that story, I saw
159
what he was saying, and how it could be true. It was all

speculative, of course; but he was using her example to try to
explain something else. That helped me immediately see the
possibilities, whereas if he had just told me about this product, I
wouldn’t have been nearly as influenced or excited about it. It
would probably have just gone in one ear and right out the other.
But by using that great story about her trumping his
discouragement with her obvious success, and then him
showing me how his idea is even much better than that, he
was able to draw me in.
I hope you can see how great an influence that one idea
had on me, because it caused me to go into overdrive
immediately. We spent a lot of time and money and energy
putting together a product line based on this idea, because that
one story influenced me to such a great deal. I bought into it...
and likely I wouldn’t have, without the story. So think about
that. Think about how stories affect all of us on an everyday
basis. The next time you get excited because somebody
presented something to you, stop and think about what they did
to get you excited. I’ll bet they used a good story, or a metaphor,
or an analogy. They tried to explain something by comparing it
to something else. That stuck in your mind, you saw it
immediately, and you got all fired up.
And again, think about your own life. The best stories to
tell are your own. There are things that excite you, so share
them. Part of selling to people is a transference of emotion.
You’re excited, so you get them excited. The best stories pump
you up, jazz you, get you enthused. You can then build
whatever it is you’re selling around those stories in order to
160
get other people excited.
This “$400 million in 72 Months Secret” that Chris and I

are launching: I learned about this story during the Thanksgiving
holiday. When I read about that company in New York that
generated over $400 million in their first 72 months, man, I got
excited about it! And when I told Chris about it, he got excited,
and he started seeing possibilities that I’m convinced he might
never have seen had I not mentioned that story to him. So think
about your own life. Think about the stories that you have.
Think about what makes you excited. Those are the best,
most powerful stories that you can tell to get other people
excited, too.
I honestly believe that the more people add good, solid

storytelling to their marketing, they more they’re going to
profit. Depending on your model, you may experience a very
dramatic increase in your sales and profits just by mastering the
art of storytelling—by finding ways to incorporate more stories
into your sales presentations, whether that’s by direct mail or
face-to-face, and especially when you’re selling via the
platform. In all things that you do selling-wise, adding
storytelling can dramatically improve your bottom line.
There’s a saying that the heart rules the mind, and that’s
why we must sell to people’s emotions. That’s what storytelling
is all about, really: the heart ruling the mind. When you’re
selling, you’re generally appealing to emotions; and again,
storytelling speaks directly to those emotions. Think about how
emotion-driven the entire selling process is. When you see a
commercial on TV, they’re appealing to your emotions for why
you need this product, not your intellect. When you get an offer
161
in the mail, or you respond to a catalog, or you visit a website

and you see something, they’re trying to tap into emotion.
Now, some purchases aren’t always or aren’t completely

emotionally-based; buying toilet paper is a good example. But
even then emotion creeps in. There’s a reason people buy
squishy Charmin instead of the thin, cheap generic stuff. It’s
because people see the persuasive commercials on TV, such as
the ones with the bears (at least as I’m writing this), where
they’re using the squishy toilet paper and having a pleasant
experience, instead of a harsh experience using the rough toilet
paper. You’d think that the necessities of life wouldn’t be sold
emotionally, and sometimes they aren’t—but often they are.
Think of the commercials for Axe, the body wash and

deodorant. They’re totally sexualized, aimed at either the high
school or college-age crowd. They want you to believe that
slapping on some deodorant will make you sexy to the people
who are attractive to you. All of a sudden you’re going to be a
magnet to all these hot women or men, when all you did was
take a shower with Axe shower gel and apply some Axe
deodorant. So they’re appealing to your emotions, not the
rational, logical part of your brain. The rational part of you
says, “I don’t need to spend six bucks on a product for the
shower. I could spend $2 and get the same result. Both get me
clean. One might smell one way while another one smells
slightly different, but they’ll both do the job.” Well, the
emotional part of you doesn’t believe in this.
And it goes beyond that. Consider cars, for example. Why

would someone spend $40,000 on a car when a $15,000 car will
still get you from point A to point B? It’s the emotions that go
162
into car buying that influence that decision—whether you want

this brand over that brand, or you want one that has a leather
interior and dual climate zones and a DVD player that drops
down in the back and a GPS in the front and a six-disc CD
changer, and all the features that go along with making a
decision on buying a car. It’s all emotional, and I think that’s
what we’re talking about here with storytelling. Stories reach
people at a deep emotional level, a level you can’t get to just by
arguing features or facts of numbers, or by being detail-oriented
about the specifics that go into your product.
If you don’t appeal to emotions at a psychological level,

you’ll never get someone to buy from you. If they’re just
going on facts and figures, then there’s almost certainly going
to be something out there that can do the same thing more
cheaply. It may be more efficient, or it may appeal to them
more on the factual level. But when you reach deep and use
stories and appeal to the heart, that will always win out.
People will spend more money for something they really, really
want than they will for something they really, really need. So
appeal to emotions. Appeal to the heart. Use lot of stories and
lots of examples to sell. Use your own story. The ability to tell
your own story is critical to your success. There’s nothing
more effective than your own example of what happened when
you yourself were doing whatever you’re trying to illustrate in
the story.
Earlier, I mentioned politicians using stories. They do it

because they know it tugs at the heart. It doesn’t matter than
there are 300 million people in the U.S., and this one person is
the only person they could find who has this problem; by
163
pointing him out, they make people feel like it’s a widespread
problem... and they can pass legislation that puts tight
restrictions on something, because one person got up in front of
Congress and had a sad story. That’s why they use stories.
The fact is, stories are everywhere; everybody tells stories.

It doesn’t matter who you’re talking to or what the scenario is,
whether it’s just buddies on the golf course or someone on a
platform selling a product, or whether it’s a waitress in a
restaurant—or whatever the situation is. We’re using stories as a
part of life. It’s time you used stories to sell your products and
services, if you’re not already doing so. It’s just an extension of
what you’re already familiar with, what you’re already doing.
Make a calculated effort to use stories to present your case
for why your prospects need to do business with you. As I’ll
outline in more detail later, the heart rules the mind. That’s why
we must sell to emotions. Storytelling will get you to the heart,
and that’s why you want to use them as often as you can.
And try to use as much enthusiasm as you can when

you tell your story. I know some people who try to tell stories,
but they drone too much. You don’t want to be one of those
people that everybody’s trying to run away from when you
come walking in. When you go to a party and you’re looking
around and you see an animated conversation happening, where
people are enthusiastic and are waving their hands and laughing
and that kind of thing, you naturally want to gravitate there.
That’s because people respond to emotions. So tell your stories
with force. Tell them with enthusiasm. Be as dramatic as you
can. Look for as many examples as you can. Extreme examples
often help; they stick in people’s brains. A good joke is a good
164
story, too.
Just try to become a better student of this kind of thing.

The better you get at it, the more money you can make;
because, again, nobody wants to be sold anything. People
hate to be sold stuff. But people do like to buy stuff, and so it’s
our job to make them think they’re buying instead of being
sold. The best marketers are those that sell you without your
knowledge of it, so it’s all right under the radar. They’re using a
lot of stories. They’re getting to you emotionally, causing you to
think that you’re the one who actually sought them out, that
you’re the one who’s buying from them, rather than them selling
to you... although, quite honestly, the reverse is probably true.
You wouldn’t buy from them if you didn’t have an interest,
that’s for sure.
Nobody can ever sell you something that you don’t want.
But people can sell you all day long without you even
realizing it when they’re using the powerful principle that
I’ve discussed in this chapter.
165

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The 2-Step

Ruthless Marketing Secrets (Series)

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in

THANK YOU for purchasing this book. As you’ll see, you

‘2-Step Marketing’ is the SAFEST WAY

But wait, there’s more!

You see, Chapter One is where I came up with THE TITLE

book are also powerful! Each of these additional chapters

Remember, all the money you want,

And to reward you for purchasing this book, I have…

A great FREE business-building gift for you!

Yes, I have a gift waiting for you that can

Why am I giving away this GIANT COLLECTION of

I know you’re serious about making more money or you

So with all this said, let’s begin…

** WARNING: This complete collection of 6,159 marketing and success

2-Step Marketing is the

STEP TWO: SLAM THEM!

Two-step marketing is nothing less than the safest and

In general, that’s Step One: getting people to raise their

Now, within that guise of simplicity, things can get very

many hundreds of billions of dollars in sales every year. Two-

The key to learning how to use this method effectively is to

Take our company, for instance. When business is

Your goal in two-step marketing is to separate the

We’re testing a promotion right this minute for something

On that second step, where we attempt to convert the

Nothing could be further from the truth! We’re living in a

I happen to think that two-step marketing is a

It doesn’t always work, of course, but that doesn’t mean it’s

things they want as well as need, the challenges they’re faced

Earlier, I mentioned our current main offer for new customer

We’re holding that out there to get them to respond

can’t really tell them, because it fluctuates by a surprising

We have a certain number of new customer acquisitions

The second part is converting those prospects: you want

don’t worry about building a lifelong customer; you just want

Approach them and say, “I know you bought Item A, so I

So, expand that business for maximum profits, not only at

the beginning of the relationship. As you go on, you’re seeking

During an interview that Johnny Carson gave about 20

In some ways, we’re all performers. My definition of

And let me repeat something you may be tired of hearing:

Study your market. Which competitors are delivering

In a nutshell, our job as marketers is to transmit the

If you’re an inventor and you create a widget of some kind,

So it starts with asking yourself these questions: What do

Once some people have developed a product they think,

from you the first time? By deeply understanding and serving

As Johnny Carson pointed out, it’s your talent and ability

Of course, that doesn’t mean that every product or

Creativity comes from the

“Creativity comes from the labor of a driven and

Realize, too, that rebelliousness is a key factor in all

Now, I’ll admit that sometimes rebels tend to just follow

The cousin questions here are, “Why not?” and “Why

A good metaphor would be the world of music. We’ve all

Think about that. Over $110,000 worth of free websites,

In the marketplace, there are too many blenders.

Part of the essence of creativity is mixing a lot of different